Chelsea thrashed Club America 3-0 over night in their first pre-season win of the new campaign after drawing with Wrexham and then losing to Celtic.
New head coach Enzo Maresca needed that win to help build some momentum ahead of the new Premier League season starting in two and a half weeks time now.
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The games will get much harder than this of course, but a win and a good performance over night will go a long way for confidence building as Maresca looks to implement a new playing style at the club.
Enzo Fernandez came back into the frame last night as well, making his first appearance since returning from the Copa America triumph with Argentina, and of course that racism incident that followed.
Fernandez a bit slow
As expected really on his first game back since the summer, Fernandez was a bit slow, as pointed out by Maresca in his post-match comments.
When asked how he thought Fernandez did on the night, Maresca replied:
“You can see he is a bit behind. In terms of physical condition, he was probably a bit slow. But he had just one or two sessions with us, no more than that. Today, 45 minutes was to give him another session. For us, this kind of game is also a training session and for Enzo today it has been a very good training session.”
This is completely normal though and I personally appreciate the honesty from Maresca, and I’m sure Fernandez will too.
Quotes via Football London.
Not sure I agree that it’s “to be expected. Enzo just returned from what was, by any measure, a brief holiday. Before that he’d been regularly playing 90mins at the highest level with Argentina. Unless he was doing nothing but guzzling beer and eating pastries while away, you’re not going to lose that much fitness in only a couple of weeks time. In other words, compared to the guys who weren’t playing in the Euros or the Copa. America and had two full months to lose conditioning, Enzo should have lost only a fraction of his peak fitness.
That’s actually true