Enzo Fernandez Set for Manchester City Debut After £125m Move
Enzo Maresca didn’t need a scouting report on Enzo Fernandez. He needed a calendar.
For the last four or five days of the transfer window, Manchester City players were in his ear, asking the same question: Is he coming? They wanted the World Cup winner in their dressing room. They wanted him in their midfield.
On deadline day, they got their wish.
City landed the 25-year-old Argentina international from Chelsea for a joint-British record £125m, completing one of the window’s biggest moves and reshaping the heart of Maresca’s side in the process.
Now Fernandez is, in Maresca’s words, “ready” to make his City debut when newly promoted Coventry City visit Etihad Stadium in the Premier League on Saturday.
“I know Enzo quite well and I know what he can bring to the team,” Maresca said. “He is a winner – a winner’s mentality and knows how to win [after] the World Cup, Club World Cup.”
Maresca trusted him enough at Chelsea to hand him the captain’s armband. At City, the hierarchy is already set. Ruben Dias has been confirmed as the new club captain, replacing Bernardo Silva, who left in the summer, with Erling Haaland, Marc Guehi and Gianluigi Donnarumma forming the rest of the leadership group.
Fernandez, though, walks into a squad that has been openly campaigning for his arrival.
“I just said he is a winner and when you belong to a squad and another winning player arrives, they are always happy,” Maresca explained. “I can promise you that in the last four or five days four or five players from the squad were asking if he is coming or not because they want him to be with us.
“It’s very important that he is with us and we are 100% happy with that.”
The feeling appears mutual. In an in-house interview on Thursday, Fernandez said he had always “dreamed of being at a club as big as City”, a line that landed like a jab at Chelsea among some supporters of his former club.
His mind, though, had been made up for months. Fernandez’s heart was set on leaving Stamford Bridge since the turn of the year, and even talks with manager Xabi Alonso in the summer failed to alter his stance.
“In football many things happen,” Alonso said. “With Enzo we have had conversations and always with respect. What he has done for the club has been great, but now it’s time to move forward.”
“We have players with quality in every position and now we are ready to go.”
City, meanwhile, have not just moved forward; they have accelerated. The champions spent a transfer window record £458m on new signings, with a staggering £327m poured into a rebuilt midfield of Fernandez, Elliot Anderson and Ayyoub Bouaddi.
Out wide, wingers Iliman Ndiaye and Allan arrived to sharpen the attack, while Geronimo Rulli came in as back-up goalkeeper. Heavy spending, but not reckless: the club recouped more than £300m in player sales to help balance the books.
Maresca made a point of saluting the scale of the backing he has received.
“I am very happy for the effort from the ownership, [chairman] Khaldoon [Al Mubarak] and [director of football] Hugo [Viana]. Very happy,” he said. “In the last days, Iliman and Enzo arrived, and now the squad is complete – it’s finished. Now it is time to work.”
The transfer drama is over. The real scrutiny begins when Fernandez steps out at the Etihad in sky blue and starts trying to justify every one of those £125 million reasons City fought so hard to bring him.
