Tunisia manager Sami Trabelsi has publicly backed Chelsea forward Est\u00eav\u00e3o to challenge for the Ballon d’Or in years to come after the 18-year-old\u2019s rapid rise. Est\u00eav\u00e3o has featured 16 times in all competitions for the Blues this season, scoring four times, and has carried that form into the international game with four goals for Brazil since the start of September.<\/p>\n
One of those strikes came against Senegal last Saturday at the Emirates Stadium. Est\u00eav\u00e3o was then due to play in Brazil\u2019s second friendly of the international break on Tuesday against Tunisia, a fixture staged in France, where Trabelsi made his assessment.<\/p>\n
The 57-year-old praised the youngster repeatedly during his pre-match media duties, branding him a \u201cgenius\u201d on three separate occasions. He expanded on that view in full: \u201cI think he\u2019s a new football genius emerging, very young,\u201d Trabelsi told ESPN . \u201cI think he\u2019s doing very well and he’s a player who can be expected to be among the greats, among the best in the world, certainly, in the coming years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trabelsi added a clear path to individual honours: \u201cIf he manages to have good performances or win titles, whether with his club or national team, he will be among the players who, in the coming years, could even compete for the Ballon d\u2019Or.\u201d He continued to underline Est\u00eav\u00e3o\u2019s technical qualities: \u201cHe brings many solutions, a lot of technique, a lot of genius. There aren\u2019t many players of that level, of that category of genius, on the world stage.\u201d<\/p>\n
For now the focus remains on the immediate fixtures. Est\u00eav\u00e3o will hope to continue impressing Brazil manager Carlo Ancelotti as the national setup looks ahead to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, for which the Sele\u00e7\u00e3o will discover their group stage opponents during December\u2019s draw. Trabelsi\u2019s public endorsement sets expectations high, but the evidence cited \u2014 club minutes, club goals and a productive international start \u2014 is all the ground his prediction rests on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trabelsi hails Chelsea 18-year-old Est\u00eav\u00e3o as a future Ballon d’Or contender for Brazil. In France.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,961],"tags":[1064,1033,1019],"class_list":["post-4544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-international","tag-ballon-dor-2","tag-brazilian-football","tag-creative-players"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4544","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=4544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}