Manager has to use Caicedo, Fernández and Lavia wisely with Club World Cup useful exercise for next season
Enzo Maresca sometimes gives the impression he would love nothing more than to name an entire team of midfielders. A conundrum facing Chelsea’s head coach, though, is that he will struggle to find space in his starting XI for everyone next season.
Chelsea are not short of options in the middle. They have the £100m buys, Enzo Fernández and Moisés Caicedo, and the elegant, deep-lying Roméo Lavia. Yet starting them all in a midfield three is not easy if Cole Palmer plays as a No 10.
Maresca has had to be creative at times. Chelsea are smoother when Lavia is conducting play. The issue is that squeezing the Belgian into the same side as Palmer and Fernández has often meant moving Caicedo out of the central areas and over to right-back, where the Ecuador international’s ball-winning ability is not as pronounced and his lack of defensive nous can be exposed by better teams.
This is where Maresca has to prove his worth. The head coach looked for a workaround when Chelsea faced Flamengo in their second game at the Club World Cup last Friday, but the plan backfired in scorching conditions in Philadelphia. Palmer shifted to an inside-right role, Fernández played higher and, with Lavia’s fitness still being managed, Maresca tried Reece James next to Caicedo in defensive midfield. He dispensed with his usual ploy of using at least one inverted full-back, instead instructing Marc Cucurella to hold his position on the left and Malo Gusto to perform a similar function on the right.
