Энцо Фернандес 125 сая фунтын үнэ цэнэтэй наймаагаар Манчестер Ситид нэгдлээ

He is one of the Premier League’s more divisive footballers.

Enzo Fernandez’s critics depict him as having the soul of a pickpocket, representing the worst of the Argentina national team and being hard to love, despite his undoubted ability.

His admirers, meanwhile, argue that “the real Enzo” does not deserve his bad-boy image, or the boos and vilification he has attracted since Argentina went down, fighting, in the World Cup.

The Athletic has spoken to a wide range of people with first-hand experience of the player who has just been sold by Chelsea to Manchester City for £125million ($169.3m), reuniting him with his former head coach at Stamford Bridge, Enzo Maresca, while equalling the British transfer record.

Everybody interviewed — from players to managers, friends to club staff — agrees that he is some player and a ferocious competitor, the “small and chubby boy”, to quote one of his first coaches in Argentina, having developed into a highly effective, all-action midfielder.

“He is a player who, if I’m the manager, I would always like to have,” says one person with first-hand knowledge of Fernandez, speaking anonymously — like many for this piece — to protect relationships. “If you have him on board with your idea, he will die for it.”

Fernandez, raised in San Martin, Buenos Aires, was so committed to his profession that, even as a teenager at River Plate, he hired his own nutritionist and coach.

For many years, as he revealed in an interview with a popular Argentine YouTube show, he has used a therapist. He is devoutly religious and appears to be a creature of habit, going through the same ritual — a cold shower and wearing the same pair of boxer shorts — before every match.

Team-mates talk about a player who, aged 25, is happy to take on a leading role and trusted by coaches to have senior responsibilities. They note the way he protects “his people” and, off the pitch, shows them a side to his personality that is not, perhaps, evident to the millions who watch him on television.

His hairdresser, for example. Diego Del Casale, who counts many of Argentina’s top footballers among his clients, tells one story about losing his luggage while flying to London, via Amsterdam, to give Fernandez a trim. And that was a problem, bearing in mind Del Casale, with a salon in Buenos Aires’ Chacarita neighbourhood, wasn’t dressed for an English winter.

“I was freezing,” he tells The Athletic. “When we finished the haircut, Enzo gave me one of his coats and made sure I was taken care of until I got my clothes back.”

These are not the kind of stories an English-speaking audience might ordinarily hear from Fernandez because, despite having almost four years at Chelsea, he still has only a limited grasp of the language. As such, he has never done a lengthy interview in English during that time. That is unusual for such a high-profile player, especially one who has been captain and vice-captain of Chelsea, and one of the reasons, perhaps, why his story remains largely untold in the country where he earns his living.

The time, for example, at the age of 15, when Fernandez wrote an open letter to Lionel Messi, posting it on Facebook after Argentina had lost the 2016 Copa America final to Chile. The young Fernandez could never have known that it would go viral and that he would go on to play alongside his hero in the 2024 tournament, with two World Cup finals either side.

The flip side, of course, is that Fernandez’s international career has left several stains on his character that will be difficult to remove.

After winning the Copa America, he was among the players caught on video singing a racist and homophobic chant about members of the France team. It was, in the words of Chelsea defender Wesley Fofana, “uninhibited racism.” Yet Fernandez was spared disciplinary action from his club after offering to make an undisclosed sum to an anti-discrimination charity (it was never revealed which one).

History will also remember Fernandez as the player who was sent off in the World Cup final and that red card against Spain must cut deep, presumably, for a player who is so fiercely patriotic when it comes to wearing Argentina’s blue and white stripes.

Fernandez fondly tells the story about how he found out, aged 21, that he had been selected for the 2022 World Cup. He was at home watching TyC Sports when he received a voice message telling him he had made the squad — but warning him to keep it secret. Fernandez was so happy he wanted to save the message as a keepsake. Sadly for him, his phone was set up to delete messages automatically.

Four years on, he has “taken a lot of stick,” to quote ex-Chelsea captain John Terry, in the aftermath of Argentina’s World Cup campaign. Yet Terry, whose own career was pockmarked by controversy, describes himself as a “big fan” of the new wearer of City’s No 17 shirt.

“Post-World Cup, he’s made it difficult for himself with the Argentinian antics,” Terry, still involved at Chelsea in a role with the club’s academy, told the GBFC YouTube channel. “But seeing him (Fernandez) work on a daily basis, and the way this man trained, I have only nice things to say about him.

“More importantly, every time he wore a Chelsea shirt, he gave absolutely everything. I know there’s going to be a divide in terms of opinions, but let’s just actually assess the time he was at the club. He drove standards on a daily basis and he was very good for the younger players even though he was young himself.”

Fernandez was so dedicated to the Chelsea cause in 2023-24, on Mauricio Pochettino’s watch, that he was left in tears after a recurring groin issue meant he had to go off in a Carabao Cup tie against Newcastle United. On international duty, Messi has described him as “a great kid and a huge player for us.”

Not everyone, however, is so positive about his influence. One complaint The Athletic has heard is that Fernandez can be too quick to assign blame elsewhere if he ever makes a mistake. Another source described him as “a pleasure to have around” while also expressing misgivings about his ability to lead, to make people around him better and to control his own emotions, as witnessed in the World Cup final. The number of bookings he has accumulated in England, including 14 for dissent (the most of any Chelsea player since the start of the 2022-23 season), was a source of concern.

Fernandez, you quickly come to realise, can be good and bad.

Then there are the occasions when he is even more of a puzzle. Perhaps you recall Fernandez making it his business to confront various ex-Chelsea players whenever they came up against their old club, as though outraged that any footballer might ever want to leave Stamford Bridge.

In particular, he made it his mission to get in the face of Mason Mount, now at Manchester United. Similarly, Fernandez has targeted the Arsenal pair Kai Havertz and Noni Madueke, even pointing to the Club World Cup badge on his shirt. All of which jars with the view of many Chelsea fans that Fernandez, along with his agent Javier Pastore, has spent a long time trying to engineer a way out of the club.

Enzo Fernandez confronts Kai Havertz after the Carabao Cup semi-final in January (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

Don’t forget, either, that Benfica’s president, Rui Costa, was highly critical of Fernandez after his £106.8million transfer to Chelsea in 2023. Fernandez, he said, was an “exceptional player” but it was a strained goodbye.

“I’m not going to cry for a player who doesn’t want to represent Benfica,” he added. “He showed no commitment to Benfica. When it became very clear that he wasn’t committed, I didn’t want him to wear the Benfica shirt anymore.”

There is also considerable evidence, as Liam Rosenior found out, that Fernandez’s attitude can flip when he no longer believes in a manager or, to use the buzzword at Chelsea, a project.

He was, in short, a Maresca man. Fernandez is described as being among the three players, alongside Marc Cucurella and Moises Caicedo, who were closest to the Italian. And he didn’t take it well when Maresca left, not just leading to friction with Rosenior as the next head coach but also jarring with the wishes of certain players, largely English ones, who felt it was important to put any disappointment over Maresca aside and move on for the good of the club.

While there is no suggestion of any kind of confrontation, there were tensions between different factions in the dressing room as Rosenior’s tenure unravelled. Yet, for all that, Fernandez continued to train properly and still had a big influence in games, scoring the winning goal against Leeds United in the FA Cup semi-final in April.

Earlier that month, Fernandez had been suspended by Chelsea, missing two games, because of an interview with ESPN Argentina that was critical of some of the club’s decisions (notably the sacking of Maresca) and which Chelsea interpreted as a come-and-get-me plea to Real Madrid. Sources have told The Athletic that Fernandez was emotional and highly frustrated at the time and that it was, to a large degree, because Paris Saint-Germain had beaten them 8-2 on aggregate over two legs in the Champions League last 16.

The defeat had been humbling and Fernandez was facing up to the reality that Chelsea, having spent hundreds of millions of pounds, had dropped so far back they might not be back in Europe’s premier club competition this season. They eventually finished 10th and he could not see a clear vision for the club. And money? Yes, that inevitably came into it, too. Although Fernandez was being paid huge sums, his salary was not at a level that City or Real Madrid could potentially offer.

Enzo Fernandez is a close ally of Enzo Maresca (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

In other interviews, Fernandez has talked about finding it difficult to get used to the English weather, particularly in the winter, when it can be grey and rainy and dark by 4pm.

It is certainly a lot different to his younger years with River Plate. Fernandez, one of five brothers, joined Argentina’s most successful club as a young boy. But he was struggling to break into the team, aged 19, when he moved on loan to Defensa y Justicia, coached by Hernan Crespo, and his career really took off.

“Juan Branda was my closest assistant at Defensa and worked for many years at River,” Crespo, widely recognised as one of the greatest Argentinian strikers of all time, told the Fuera de Juego podcast earlier this year. “After (River coach Marcelo Gallardo) left Enzo off the first-team squad in preseason, Branda told me, ‘Look, the fat kid can play — he hasn’t made that leap yet but he’s a good player.’ We brought him over and it was evident he had River’s DNA.”

Crespo, himself a former Chelsea player, described Fernandez in an interview with ESPN as “one of those players who plays well no matter where you put him. He can play as a No 6, as a No 8 or as a No 10. He can play behind a centre-forward. He has the entire picture inside his head. He’s a modern player. He solves problems for you.”

And now? City supporters of a certain generation might see similarities with Carlos Tevez, another Argentinian who could be brilliant on the pitch but divisive if he ever thought things were not going his way.

Maresca, however, need not worry about encountering the same kind of spectacular fallout that blew apart relations between Tevez and City’s last Italian manager, Roberto Mancini. It was Maresca, after all, who turned Fernandez from a playmaker into a player who would arrive late into the penalty area and be more of a goal threat, finishing behind only Joao Pedro last season as Chelsea’s leading scorer.

“I think he’s going to be a big miss,” says Terry. “He’s a big plus for Manchester City. He’s a very good player… and he’s a winner. That’s what I love about him.”

Additional reporting: Simon Johnson, Asli Pelit, Pol Ballus, Felipe Cardenas