Benfica’s technical director, the German Roger Schmidt, assured this Thursday that the Portuguese club does not intend to sell the Argentine midfielder Enzo Fernández and accused Chelsea of ”driving the footballer crazy”. In addition, the coach announced that the world champion midfielder will receive a sanction for missing two training sessions and traveling without permission to Argentina to spend the New Year.
In a tense press conference, Schmidt described as “unacceptable” that Enzo has missed two practices for traveling without permission to his country. “He did not have permission to travel, he missed two training sessions and that is unacceptable. There will be consequences but I am not going to say which ones,” said the DT, who also clarified that it is a specific anger and that his assessment of the former River player did not change . “Fernández is a very good boy and an excellent player. He played in a World Cup, he was champion and there is a lot of money on the table. A player can get confused when he thinks that and I think it’s something that everyone understands,” he said.
Then Schmidt jumped directly into the issue of the transfer to Chelsea and accused the English club of “driving the footballer crazy”. “We don’t want to sell Enzo, neither I nor the president. We all know that he has an exit clause in the contract. If he wants to leave and a club pays for it, we can’t do anything”, remarked the coach, who made his annoyance clear with Chelsea for his way of negotiating, although he did not mention it specifically. “There is a club that wants the player, that knows we don’t want to sell and they want to do it knowing that the only way is to pay the clause. It’s very clear, what that club is doing is disrespectful,” he said.
“I cannot accept what they are doing. They want to drive the player crazy by pretending that they are going to pay the clause and then they say they want to negotiate. It is not the way for two clubs to have a good relationship,” he expanded. “This is what I can say on the subject and I am not answering any more questions related to this,” she concluded.
These statements by the Benfica coach reveal that Chelsea does not have the execution of the exit clause valued at 120 million euros as a purchase strategy, but rather intends to acquire the footballer chosen as the best young player in Qatar 2022 through another type of operation.
Regarding football, the list of summoned for Friday’s match against Portimonense for the Portuguese League is awaited to confirm if the sanction of the coaching staff is to marginalize Enzo Fernández from the match.
