Benfica Manager Slams Chelsea For Dishonest Pursuit Of Enzo Fernandez

Benfica manager Roger Schmidt criticizes the way Chelsea have gone about pursuing Enzo Fernandez. Schmidt believes Chelsea deliberately unsettled Fernandez.

Benfica manager Roger Schmidt has criticized the way Chelsea have gone about pursuing Enzo Fernandez.

The 21-year-old only joined Benfica from River Plate in August of last year.

But a brilliant World Cup campaign with Argentina has resulted in fresh interest from some of Europe's biggest clubs.

It is understood that Fernandez has a release clause of around £106 million in his current Benfica contract.

Schmidt has claimed that Chelsea deliberately unsettled Fernandez by dishonestly pretending that they are willing to activate this release clause.

The suggestion from Schmidt is that Chelsea did this in the hope that Fernandez would agitate for a move, thus weakening Benfica's hand in negotiations.

"What the club is doing who wants Enzo, it's disrespectful against all of us, against Benfica and I cannot accept what they are doing," Schmidt told reporters this week.

Enzo Fernandez pictured in action for Argentina during the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar :: IMAGO/Moritz Muller

"To make the player crazy, and then to pretend they can pay the clause and later they want to negotiate I think is not what I understand about a good relationship between clubs who maybe want to discuss about the player."

Schmidt added: "Enzo, we don't want to sell him, 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 and so then maybe we will lose the player.

"There's a club who want 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 only can get this player when they pay the clause so it's a very clear situation."

Fernandez played in all seven of Argentina's games at Qatar 2022, scoring one goal and assisting another.

He returned to club soccer last week by playing 89 minutes in Benfica's 3-0 loss at Braga.

But he should have come back sooner, according to Schmidt.

Fernandez pictured playing for Benfica against Braga last week :: IMAGO/@guelbergoes

He continued: "First of all Enzo is a very good boy and a fantastic football player. We like him a lot and, of course, we want that he stays at Benfica.

"Of course, the situation for him is not so easy because he played the World Cup, he became world champion, he got offers, and there's a lot of money on the table.

"In this situation as a young player you think about that, [it can] confuse you a little bit. 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 [to celebrate]. He missed the training so that is not acceptable. That's why it will have consequences."