Chelsea midfielder Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez was at the centre of a brief controversy after comments during the international break prompted speculation about his future. His agent, Javier Pastore, initially criticised Chelsea\u2019s decision to suspend the Argentina international and suggested Fern\u00e1ndez would consider his options at the end of the season. Now Pastore says the matter has been settled and relations with the club have been restored.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are statements he made without any intention of causing problems at Chelsea ,\u201d Pastore told Top Mercato . \u201cHe\u2019s the captain, one of the team\u2019s leaders, and he\u2019s shown his best form on the pitch this season. He was simply talking about a city.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen there were a lot of interviews in a short period where he talked about his future. The media mixed things up and started saying he was going to leave Chelsea. There\u2019s absolutely nothing to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re on the same page with Chelsea. We made peace yesterday and the day before between Chelsea and the player. There were never really any problems. We cleared the air.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pastore pointed out Fern\u00e1ndez did not explicitly name Real Madrid but twice described the city as a dream destination and cited Luka Modri\u0107 and Toni Kroos as inspirations. Those remarks were combined with a refusal to publicly commit to Chelsea, which helped fuel the coverage that led to the club\u2019s disciplinary response.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened, happened,\u201d Pastore added. \u201cWe explained to the player that, even though he didn\u2019t do anything wrong, he shouldn\u2019t have said that.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s only 25. He\u2019s still young, he still has things to learn. We explained to the club that he said it without malice, that he made a mistake. He naturally apologized to the club, his teammates, the coach, the sporting director, everyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re all on the same page. We simply had to clear up the misunderstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fern\u00e1ndez remains suspended as it stands for the upcoming meeting with Manchester City. Chelsea manager Liam Rosenior is due to speak to the media later this week, and an update on the midfielder\u2019s availability is expected. Pastore did suggest Fern\u00e1ndez could return sooner than anticipated. \u201cChelsea is fighting for its Champions League spot through the Premier League, which is very important for the club,\u201d the agent said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pastore: Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez apologised after remarks about a city; club and player have cleared the air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1383,172],"tags":[1505,983,1047],"class_list":["post-11255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea-news","category-epl","tag-accountability","tag-agents","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}