Chelsea have lost young midfielder D\u00e1rio Essugo to injury during the September international break at the start of the 2025\u201326 season. The knock came while the player was with Portugal U21s and has forced him to withdraw from squad involvement.<\/p>\n
Essugo was among a large summer recruitment drive after qualification for the Champions League. The player traders at BlueCo added 10 to the squad and Essugo arrived from Sporting CP for \u00a318.5 million ($23.9 million) in June. The 20-year-old was always viewed primarily as depth; he earned 38 minutes across three appearances during Chelsea’s Club World Cup campaign but has yet to play at the start of his Premier League career.<\/p>\n
In September he was called up to the Portugal U21s but was later excused from the group after picking up the problem. “The Chelsea midfielder was excused from training due to a muscle problem in his right thigh, which he suffered after training on Monday,” the Portuguese Football Federation confirmed. “The athlete was evaluated by the Portuguese Football Federation\u2019s Health and Performance Department on Tuesday morning and was declared unavailable.”<\/p>\n
Essugo’s planned role this season is to provide cover for Mois\u00e9s Caicedo. Caicedo’s own international break has been affected by fitness concerns: the Ecuador midfielder sat out his side’s first game and was spotted training with a brace around his knee. The prevailing view within the club was that Caicedo’s absence was more precautionary than the result of a serious issue.<\/p>\n
The timing of Essugo’s withdrawal is unwelcome for Chelsea as the squad adapts to a busier calendar, but the club’s summer signings were intended to build resilience across a crowded schedule. The immediate impact will be on selection options while the youngster completes assessment and recovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
D\u00e1rio Essugo withdrew from Portugal U21s after a right-thigh muscle problem following training. Sept<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[945,946],"class_list":["post-2572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-dario-essugo","tag-moises-caicedo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572","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=2572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}