Preseason at Cobham is into its second week now and players are trickling back to join the first team.
One face we’ve not seen before joined today – €5m summer signing Marc Guiu. He took part in his first session with his new teammates today, with photos showing him in our tacky new training kit.
Still just 18, he’s a big lad and already looks like he can handle himself, although these early sessions will give him a taste of the increased physicality he can expect in England. It’s important he shows he can handle it, and shows he is already developed enough to play senior football to a high level now. He skipped straight to the first team from Barcelona’s Under-19s, with just a 17 game spell at Barca B.
Marc Guiu’s first Chelsea training session… ✅ pic.twitter.com/atAfLmx0f7
— LDN (@LDNFootbalI) July 17, 2024
A massive moment at an innocuous time
Marc Guiu has had a special 12 months – scoring a few minutes into your debut for your boyhood club (which happens to be Barcelona) is hard to beat. Yet after all that, and with plenty still ahead, these couple of weeks could be a huge hinge in his career.
He’s limited time to show new manager Enzo Maresca, plus the sporting directors, what he can do. That will tangibly affect his career in the short term and long term. It still seems more than possible to us that if he looks brilliant in training and the subsequent friendlies, that he stays with the first team squad next season, and they potentially even gamble by not signing another striker.
Equally if he struggles and looks raw and unready to feature for the first team, he may end up on loan, slightly off the radar and with a new forward coming in to block his progress.
It’s only the early days of preseason, but he will know just how important it is for him.
