Enzo Fernández has been warned he could end up being treated the same way as Hakim Ziyech if he doesn’t shine at Chelsea in the coming years.
The Argentine midfielder completed a deadline day move to the Blues after months of speculation about a transfer, signing in a £106.8m record deal.
While his transfer was being finalised, Ziyech found his efforts to leave Chelsea frustrated as the club focused on the World Cup winner.
He wanted to joined Paris Saint Germain on loan and was in Paris waiting for the paperwork to be sent, only for the Blues to twice send it over unsigned and hold the situation up.
He eventually didn’t get the transfer as the paperwork was not submitted in time and an appeal to those in charge in France was rejected.
It leaves him stuck at Chelsea until the end of the season, where he seems unlikely to play a major role under Graham Potter given the plethora of options he now has at his disposal.
Mikos Gouka covers the situation today and says the whole affair should serve as a warning to Fernández as how badly things can go.
“Let it be a wise lesson for Enzo Fernández immediately,” he writes in Algemeen Dagblad.
“Chelsea did everything they could this month to loosen the Argentine world champion from Benfica, with staggering transfer fees put on the table almost carelessly in order to quell the sporting crisis at Stamford Bridge.
“Similarly, at the time, the English club laid on Hakim Ziyech as the first purchase in 2020 after the transfer ban imposed on the club by FIFA.
“But two-and-a-half years later, the club does not even bother to carefully finalise a rental deal with Paris Saint-Germain. As if Ziyech, one of the better players at the last World Cup in Qatar, simply no longer mattered already.
“And the fact that the rental deal, which could have earned Chelsea another few million, collapsed so easily through negligence indicated yet again that the top English club is not at all concerned about money.
“After all, they have that in abundance. Staff to sign contracts and send paperwork on time, however, they do not, Ziyech revealed Tuesday night in anger.”
