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The preseason is officially here! Rejoice!
While the vast majority of the first-team squad is either on post-World Cup vacation, or still drowning their sorrows in Brazil, or is André Schürrle, a few familiar names have reported back to Cobham this morning.
"It will be squad members who have not been involved in the World Cup in today, including the likes of John Terry, Branislav Ivanovic, Nemanja Matic, Mohamed Salah and others, with young players from the Academy likely to be part of the training in the coming days too."
"Those players who exited the World Cup at the group stage - including new signing Cesc Fabregas - will join up with the squad ahead of our European training camp, with those who progressed further in the tournament arriving back at various points subsequently."
-source: Chelsea FC
I like how the official website couldn't/didn't bother to give us a full list of participants. How about Marco van Ginkel or Demba Ba or Oriol Romeu or Marko Marin or Ryan Bertrand or... I guess we'll find out in due time.
This also means that for the first two friendlies (Wycombe on the 16th and AFC Wimbledon on the 19th), we'll just be using this mixture of senior and U21 squads, kind of like we did last summer during the Tour of Asia. Except in far less exotic locations. Not that Wycombe isn't exotic. I'm sure it's lovely.
To celebrate this occasion, the official website has undergone a much needed design change. Though I'm a bit lost right now, so I'm not sure it's for the better (yet). But the match center, especially the 'events' diagrams are pretty [funning] cool, even though I don't see a way to embed them. Screenshots it is!
Ok, so this is pretty cool in the match center of the redesigned @chelseafc website. Need embed option! pic.twitter.com/2IHxk7sEWi
— Dávid Pásztor (@D_Peezy) July 9, 2014