Est\u00eav\u00e3o made a striking first impression as Chelsea beat Bayer Leverkusen 2\u20130 in Friday\u2019s friendly, opening the scoring after being handed a start. The forward had joined up with the club after scoring against the Blues at this summer\u2019s Club World Cup and wasted little time producing an eye-catching contribution in his first outing.<\/p>\n
Manager Enzo Maresca spoke positively about the teenager after the match, signalling belief in his potential. “He\u2019s very, very young,” Maresca said after the game. “For sure, as I said yesterday, he is going to help the team. He\u2019s a fantastic player.”<\/p>\n
New signing Jamie Gittens, who also impressed on his first appearance, underlined the impact Est\u00eav\u00e3o has already had around the squad, pointing to what team-mates have seen in training. “It was amazing,” Gittens told the media. “You\u2019ve seen the Joga Bonito.<\/p>\n
“He\u2019s a great player with so much skill and attributes so it was great to see him play and score. We see it in training every day. He\u2019s been here for a week and he\u2019s already done mad things in training so to see it today was just one part of him doing it every day.”<\/p>\n
After firing home his first unofficial goal for the club, Est\u00eav\u00e3o kissed the Chelsea badge, a public display of affection for his new team. The performance gives him momentum as Maresca prepares his squad for their final pre-season friendly against AC Milan on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The friendly victory offered a chance to assess new additions and build cohesion ahead of the season. Est\u00eav\u00e3o\u2019s early contribution combined with positive reactions from the coaching staff and a fellow recruit will ensure he remains under close observation as Chelsea finalise preparations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Est\u00eav\u00e3o scores on his Chelsea debut; Maresca and Jamie Gittens praise his immediate impact. in full.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1419,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[680,178,180,182],"class_list":["post-1413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","tag-estevao","tag-friendly","tag-player-news","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413","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=1413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1420,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413\/revisions\/1420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}