By OkayGoal
Manchester City are closing in on a deal worth around £120 million for Enzo Fernandez, and the transfer is dividing opinion for reasons that go well beyond the fee.
He is someone whose time on English shores have been shadowed by controversy almost from the moment he arrived in England and it looks like Man City are about to inherit all of it.
Why Enzo Fernandez divides opinion so sharply
The pattern goes back to how he left Benfica in the first place. He spent barely five or six months there before he forced a January move to Chelsea in 2023 and that exit was reportedly toxic enough that relations between the two clubs came close to a physical confrontation.
That kind of departure so early in a career tends to set expectations, and sure enough, rumours about a move to Real Madrid were circulating within weeks of him arriving at Stamford Bridge.
Then there is the 2024 incident, when Fernandez was filmed singing a racist chant aimed at French players during Argentina’s Copa América celebrations. Wesley Fofana was among the Chelsea teammates who spoke out publicly at the time. Fernandez did come out and apologise for it in public as well as privately. And has since said the fallout actually strengthened some of his relationships in the dressing room.
He also served an internal suspension after making his desire to move to Madrid a little too public.
Add in performances that took the best part of two years to genuinely click at Chelsea, and the ingredients for a divisive reputation were all there before he ever scored the goal that broke England’s hearts in Argentina’s Copa América run.
The case for Enzo Fernandez as a footballer
Strip away the noise and the on-pitch case is a strong one.
Since late 2024 he has arguably been Chelsea’s most consistent performer, someone who repeatedly turns up in the biggest moments.
His equaliser in the Club World Cup final and his output across a difficult Chelsea season, 15 goals last term in a team that badly underperformed, are numbers that are genuinely hard to dismiss.
He has the knack of scoring important goals under pressure, something that showed again at the World Cup with Argentina.
The interesting part is where those numbers actually come from. Fernandez and Moises Caicedo were signed as a midfield partnership in 2023, but it has rarely functioned that way in practice. Fernandez has been pushed progressively further forward at Chelsea, closer to a number ten than a deep playmaker, because that is where he has the greatest impact. H
e is not really a six, not really a classic eight, more a hybrid who is most dangerous the higher up the pitch he plays. That has arguably created an imbalance in Chelsea’s own attack, overlapping at times with Cole Palmer’s zone, but it also explains why his end product has been so strong.
The defensive question mark with Enzo
Earlier in his Chelsea career, he was used deeper much closer to a six and that is where the limitations showed most clearly.
The Premier League’s physicality and speed of transition exposed him in ways that international football has not.
It is a familiar story for technically gifted midfielders who struggle with recovery speed once the ball is lost, and it is not something that improves with age. If anything, his defensive limitations are more likely to become more pronounced as his career progresses, not less.
What he does offer defensively is presence rather than pure defensive output, a talismanic quality that drags a team forward and, at his best, makes him genuinely difficult to ignore on the pitch.
Chelsea’s broader discipline issues have not been confined to him either, so it would be unfair to single him out entirely on that front.
The Fulham incident that got everone talking
More recently, after Chelsea’s win at Fulham under Xabi Alonso, a genuinely positive moment for the club, Fernandez came off the bench, then walked off alone at the final whistle and disappeared down the tunnel.
However it was intended, it read as a statement, and it became the story of the day. That is the pattern that has followed him: even good moments for Chelsea end up being overshadowed by questions about his own situation.
Why Chelsea are willing to sell
The honest answer is that this has been building for a long time,and clubs eventually reach a point of exhaustion with a saga rather than a player. Xabi Alonso needs full buy-in from a squad trying to build genuine cohesion, and a player whose priority appears to be leaving does not fit that picture regardless of ability.
There is a tactical dimension too. The long-running difficulty of accommodating both Fernandez and Caicedo in the same midfield could actually be solved by his departure, freeing Chelsea to sign a more defensively secure profile alongside Caicedo and giving Morgan Rogers, Palmer and the rest of the attack more license to operate.
Rogers in particular offers a version of the advanced playmaking role that Fernandez has occupied, which makes the timing of that signing look less like coincidence.
What Manchester City would actually be getting
Judged purely on output, this is close to a no-brainer. Few midfielders offer this level of end product and City’s current group with Phil Foden still searching for his best form and a genuine goal threat from midfield in short supply, would benefit from exactly that profile.
The comparisons to a Rodri replacement do not really hold up, since the two players offer almost nothing similar stylistically, but that was never really the point of the move.
The genuine risk is the Real Madrid question refusing to go away. That was reportedly his first choice this summer before the move collapsed, and there is little reason to think the ambition disappears once he arrives at City. Every international break spent away from City’s day-to-day control is another opportunity for that story to resurface.
The other layer worth watching is whether this move has come from City’s football hierarchy or is being driven more by Enzo Maresca’s personal relationship with a player he trusts, having managed him closely at Chelsea. If it is the latter, any friction down the line becomes more understandable.
Taken purely as a football decision, signing Fernández makes obvious sense, and the fee, in a market where genuinely everything now costs over £100 million, no longer looks as extraordinary as it once would have. The question was never really about the quality. It is whether Manchester City are prepared to manage everything that comes attached to it.