It’s a hectic summer of international football – the Euros, the Copa America, the Toulon tournament and this year, the Olympics games too.
Clubs can’t do much about their players heading off to play in FIFA sanctioned tournaments, but they can reject invitations to the Olympics, and that’s just what Chelsea have done. First we heard that Enzo Fernandez wasn’t going to be allowed to join up with Argentina, now the France squad is out and we see that Benoit Badiashile and Malo Gusto have been denied permission to play with their national team in the Olympics in Paris.
We’re not sure what their reaction will be – some players would be frustrated but others would understand the difficult situation that clubs are in in these situations. Chelsea suffered so badly from injuries last season and want to try and solve that. Not only that, they’ve got a new coach coming in with very limited time after the major international tournaments to get his work done before the season starts.
A delicate balance for each player
While we ended up concluding that Lesley Ugochukwu attending the tournament was acceptable – as he’s pretty far down the pecking order in midfield and didn’t play a huge amount this season just gone, we agree with the decision to keep Malo Gusto and Benoit Badiashile back.
Firstly, they both played a lot more than Ugochukwu last season, and could do with a break. They’re also both really competing for starts from the first minute of preseason, and will form an important part of Enzo Maresca’s squad. It’s vitally important they’re up to speed with what he wants from the first minute of the first session.
Other players can afford to join in later and pick things up as the season goes on – these two need to maximise their time in training with the new coach.