From Chelsea’s record breaker with an over-active thyroid to a Gunner who’s invented a unique skill move, this gaggle of under-23s are making the Premier League the go-to destination for the next generation
Words Marcus Alves, Arthur Renard, Mark White, Jessy Parker Humphreys, Scott Patterson, Ed McCambridge
ENZO FERNANDEZ
Enzo Fernandez had just lifted the World Cup and bagged the FIFA Young Player Award when a reporter approached him for an interview. “How did you do that?” the journalist asked. “Two and a half years ago, you joined Defensa y Justicia.”
The midfielder, then just 21, broke down in tears of joy and disbelief. From Defensa to River Plate, and then to Benfica, Fernandez couldn’t have anticipated that a month after fielding this question having become a world champion, he’d be moving again – to Chelsea, in a British record £107 million transfer.
“What he has achieved in so little time is almost impossible,” says River Plate’s youth football coordinator, Gabriel Rodriguez, who has known him for more than a decade.
In mid-2020, having accumulated only nine minutes for Los Millonarios’ first team, the Argentine faced a defining decision: stay in the reserves or leave his comfort zone and join Buenos Aires minnows Defensa on loan. He finally settled on the latter.
“It could have gone either way, but fortunately he did very well there,” Rodriguez tells FFT. So well that, after working under former Chelsea man Hernan Crespo and winning two continental trophies in a year, he was recalled early by River’s boss at the time, Marcelo Gallardo. Back at El Monumental, he was still referred to as ‘the other Enzo’, after veteran midfielder Enzo Perez. That changed in November 2021 when Enzo Jr secured a starting berth after injuries hit the team. He hasn’t looked back.
Snapped up by River Plate aged six, here he was fulfilling his childhood dream, though not without sacrifice. Among other things, ‘El Gordo’ (‘the fat one’), as his old team-mates nicknamed him, struggled with his weight as a kid.
“One day he told me, ‘River are going to release me’,” recalled his father, Raul. “The talent was there but staying in shape was hard, so I took him to a high-performance centre and he lost 5kg in a month.” Those efforts were rewarded when Benfica made their €18m offer in July 2022.
Fernandez hit the ground running in Lisbon, scoring on debut in a Champions League qualifier against Midtjylland. It was as if he’d been playing in Europe all his life. A complete box-to-box midfielder with an eye for goal, he was key to Benfica topping
