Exclusive: Why Enzo Fernandez's Chelsea transfer has broken down

Ben Jacobs

• 11 Jan 2023 05:30 CST
• 4 min read

Exclusive

Enzo Fernandez’s transfer from Benfica to Chelsea may not be dead in the water, but talks have certainly stalled over a deal that was expected to go through last week.

Chelsea received further bad news with regards the prospect of forcing a transfer through in the January window as Enzo celebrated scoring in a Taca de Portugal encounter by apparently intimating that he will stay put.

Writing exclusively for FootballTransfers, transfer insider Ben Jacobs of CBS Sports has explained exactly what has gone on behind the scenes to put the brakes on this deal...

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Benfica's stance at the moment on that it is release clause or nothing and they are disappointed by how the negotiations played out because their arguments - and it is only one side - is that Chelsea came to the table, showed a clear willingness to match or better Enzo Fernandez’s release clause, verbally intimated that they would engage providing that a preferable structure terms on whatever the number was was provided and then when they finally got to the table and Chelsea made a formal offer, it was significantly lower.

On the one hand, this tells you that Chelsea are not just cash crazy. Their actual offers are more sensible than perhaps the media are implying, but at the same time if Benfica wanted €120 million or above, regardless of the structure, and Chelsea's offer was under €90 million then obviously Benfica will argue that their time was wasted.

But we have to be clear here that narratives will be different between buyer and seller. This is classic gamesmanship within a transfer window because if you are Benfica and a sale is agreed, then you are always going to say it's either the release clause or it's above the release clause.

And if you are Chelsea and you fail in the pursuit of Enzo Fernandez, you're always going to brief that your offer was incredibly reasonable and much lower than was reported.

The reason for that is that a club like Chelsea don't want to be seen to fail having bid a crazy amount of money because that will come back to bite them in another negotiation.

And similarly, Benfica because Enzo Fernandez was the player of the World Cup, as far as the young footballer was concerned, cannot be seen with somebody that only joined over the summer to have caved to what would be deemed cut-price deal, even though something around €85-90m is still significantly above Enzo Fernandez's market value.

Chelsea face a battle to seal Enzo transfer

These are the considerations here, which is why I always say it's not worth obsessing about fees until they're done. We get ballparks and we get estimations, but now that talks have stalled we have to be very clear that Benfica will have one narrative and Chelsea will have one narrative. The stories probably won't match and that is just how a transfer window works.

I think that Benfica very calm about the situation. They know that the player wanted the Chelsea move, but they are tough negotiators and Rui Costa was not going to be forced into a sale and this is what having an extremely high release clause and having only just signed the player does - it gives Benfica a lot of the control over the situation.

So as of the time of recording a deal has stalled. But we wait and see whether Chelsea change their opinion as the window goes on and choose to come back in for Enzo Fernandez.

Right now, if they're to be successful, they're being very clearly told it's the release clause or nothing and if that is the genuine position of Benfica, I don’t think a deal will get done.