Manchester City Players Eager for Enzo Fernandez Signing
Inside Manchester City’s dressing room, the transfer saga around Enzo Fernandez was not just background noise. It became a talking point. A wish, even.
Several City players were going directly to their manager, Enzo Maresca, in the final days of the window with one question: Is Enzo coming? They wanted him in their team. They wanted to play with him.
They got their wish.
Fernandez, 25, arrived from Chelsea on deadline day for a joint-British record fee of £125m, reuniting with Maresca and dropping straight into a squad already built to win everything. The Argentina international is expected to make his debut on Saturday against newly promoted Coventry City at Etihad Stadium.
“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 had made Fernandez captain during their time together at Chelsea. At City, though, the armband goes elsewhere. Ruben Dias has been confirmed as the new club captain, replacing Bernardo Silva after his summer departure, with Erling Haaland, Marc Guehi and Gianluigi Donnarumma forming the rest of the leadership group.
That hasn’t dimmed the excitement around Fernandez in the slightest.
“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 is mutual. In an in-house interview released on Thursday, Fernandez said he had always “dreamed of being at a club as big as City”, a line that landed awkwardly for some at Stamford Bridge and was interpreted as a dig at Chelsea.
His mind, though, had been made up long before the cameras rolled. Fernandez’s desire to leave Chelsea had been firm since the turn of the year. Conversations this summer with manager Xabi Alonso were not enough to change 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 reshaped their squad with typical financial muscle and precision. The champions spent a transfer window record £458m on new signings, including a staggering £327m on a rebuilt midfield of Fernandez, Elliot Anderson and Ayyoub Bouaddi.
They did not stop there. Wingers Iliman Ndiaye and Allan arrived to add width and direct running, while Geronimo Rulli came in as back-up goalkeeper. Despite the outlay, City recouped more than £300m in player sales, underlining the scale of their churn and the ruthlessness of their planning.
Maresca made a point of crediting the hierarchy that funded it all.
“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 money has been spent, the dressing room has its man, and the manager has his midfield rebuilt in one window. Now comes the real test: can Enzo Fernandez turn all that anticipation inside the Etihad into trophies on the pitch?
