Benfica claim moral victory, too, over ‘disrespectful’ Chelsea in Enzo Fernández saga

Chelsea’s talks with Benfica over a potential Enzo Fernández transfer collapsed earlier this week, largely on account of the Blues unwilling to meet the player’s release clause, and offering only two-thirds of that €120m amount in a cash deal.

Benfica, who had been tempted to come to the negotiating table after initial reluctance, have not taken took kindly to the way that all played out — with head coach Roger Schmidt making it quite clear just what he thinks of us at the moment.

“There is 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 they can only get this player when they pay the clause.

“It is a very clear situation. What the club is doing, it is 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 then later they want to negotiate, it is not what I understands to be good relationship between clubs who want to discuss players.”

Now, and I hope you’re sitting down for this, because you’re not going to believe this, what Chelsea are being accused of is to, wait for it, try to unsettle a player! Wow; how come no one’s ever thought of doing this before??!

In any case, we’re back to square one, and would need to pay the actual release clause now if we want our man.

“We do not want to sell Enzo. Not me, not the president, nobody. We know, everyone knows he has a clause in the contract and if the player wants to leave and someone comes and pays the clause of course we cannot work against that. Then maybe we will lose the player.”

-Roger Schmidt; source: Metro

Maybe!