Chelsea deploy Impossible Transfer-Mission Force to Benfica in final Enzo Fernández attempt

With less than 48 hours to go in the January transfer window, Chelsea have reportedly deployed our Impossible Transfer-Mission Force (ITMF) to Portugal. I’m definitely picturing a HALO jump here, because their mission, should they choose to accept it, is to return with Enzo Fernández.

The ITMF already conducted one such operation in Warsaw earlier this month (Paul Winstanley and Behdad Eghbali leading the way), when Shakhtar’s Mykhailo Mudryk was the target. Can we do it again? The sequel is never good as the original, though the Mission: Impossible movies do prove an exception, repeatedly, to that rule. And if we can get Enzo, the ITMF will have indeed outdone themselves to an even greater extent.

Of course, it will not be easy. Impossible, you might even say.

Benfica have been adamant all along that they don’t want to talk and that we would have to pay the €120m release clause. And the one time we convinced them to relent slightly on that stance, we apparently blew the opportunity by lowballing. (Or so they said.) Can we rebuild that trust and get them back to the table? And if they do sit down (and we are going so presumably we think there might be a chance), can we get them to agree to something that doesn’t involve them getting all €120m in one lump sum (less what they owe to River Plate in sell-ons and add-ons), which is what would happen with a release clause?

But I guess we’re trying, so good luck to us. The trick is put someone in a Todd Boehly mask. (Or maybe agree to a loan-back, a la Malo Gusto, as the local rumormongers have speculated?)