Chelsea’s teamsheet for today’s game it out, and despite the injury to N’Golo Kante, there’s no place in the squad for Denis Zakaria.
The Juventus midfielder has been brought in on loan to be the back up to Kante in a defensive midfield role, yet he’s nowhere to be seen in Tuchel’s group.
As Nizaar Kinsella explained from Stamford Bridge on the Evening Standard’s Twitter page, the reason is simple.
You can see him explaining in the Tweet embedded here.
"Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is injured and Denis Zakaria hasn't had his work permit through in time."
🗣 @NizaarKinsella explains why two of Chelsea's new signings are not involved this afternoon.
LIVE: https://t.co/KwYMeNUmeg#CHEWHU pic.twitter.com/mSnnIqlJeE
— Standard Sport (@standardsport) September 3, 2022
As he says, it’s just a boring work permit issue in the end. Zakaria only arrived as a last minute deadline day signing, and post Brexit the application for these things takes a lot longer.
We will doubt he would have featured, having not had a training session, but it has forced Thomas Tuchel’s hand in terms of formation and midfielders available.
Things should be sorted for next week’s games.
