BENFICA are not happy with Chelsea’s approach for Enzo Fernandez and will not back down on the value they have placed on the Argentina midfielder.
Fernandez, who played a key role as Argentina won their first World Cup in 36 years in Qatar in December, has been courted by Chelsea for the past few weeks.
The 21-year-old, who won the Best Young Player award at the Qatar 2022 World Cup, has a huge buyout clause of €120 million in his Benfica contract and the Portuguese club insist it must be met before he is sold.
Chelsea and Benfica had reportedly agreed to a structured payment of the buyout fee only for the deal to collapse last night.
Benfica head coach Roger Schmidt accused Chelsea of turning the player’s head after he missed training sessions and extended his post-World Cup break.
“First of all, Enzo is a very good boy and a fantastic football player. We like him a lot and of course we want him to stay at Benfica,” Schmidt said at a press conference today.
“The situation for him is not so easy because he played at the World Cup, he became world champion and he got offers. There’s a lot of money on the table and in this situation, as a young player, you think about that. [It can] confuse you a little.
“I think that everybody can understand but nevertheless he’s a very good boy. He was not there last week. He had no permission to go to Argentina. He missed training so that is not acceptable. That’s why it will have consequences.”
Although Schmidt did not mention Chelsea directly, it was obvious he was referring to the English club when he talked about a ‘disrespectful’ approach in the pursuit of Fernandez.
“Nobody wants to sell him at this club. Everybody knows he has a clause in his contract and, of course, if the player wants to leave and somebody comes and pays the clause, we cannot work against that so then maybe we will lose the player,” he added.
“There’s a club who wants our player. They know we don’t want to sell the player, they tried to get the player on their side and they know that they can only get this player when they pay the clause so it’s a very clear situation what the club who wants to buy Enzo is doing.
“It’s disrespectful against all of us, against Benfica, and I cannot accept what they are doing. So to make the player crazy, and then to pretend they can pay the clause and later they want to negotiate, it’s not what I understand about a good relationship between clubs who maybe want to discuss about the player.”
Chelsea reportedly lowered their offer to €85m after initially agreeing to pay the full buyout clause, which apparently angered Benfica.
