Chelsea midfielder Enzo Fernandez had a barrage of objects hurled at him from the away end as he was trying to take a corner but eventually had the last laugh against his former side.<\/p>\n
The Argentine, 24, led his team out as captain and helped secure a win in the first Champions League match at Stamford Bridge for two-and-a-half years.<\/p>\n
Having helped get the ball out wide, Fernandez was lurking to score a tap-in had Rios not turned into his own net in the 18th minute.<\/p>\n
It was an example of the World Cup winner’s increased goalscoring instinct, adopting those Frank Lampard-style late runs into the box to score three goals this season.<\/p>\n
Indeed, Fernandez has been involved in 16 goals in his last 27 appearances in all competitions for Chelsea (seven goals, nine assists), with only Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah having a better record among Premier League players.<\/p>\n
That final-third impact has been key with star attacker Cole Palmer having suffered patchy form in 2025 before succumbing to a persistent groin injury.<\/p>\n
Fernandez has had to be robust and has started all nine of Chelsea’s matches in all competitions this season.<\/p>\n
That shows the leadership and grit Maresca needs from one of his leaders \u2013 as did the fact he was the most fouled player and involved in the most duels on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
Of course, you can see why the Benfica fans would have been so angry at losing him even for a then-British transfer record \u00a3107m in 2023. He left just six months after joining from River Plate, and also forced his exit.<\/p>\n
He may well be public enemy number one in Lisbon, but he is increasingly winning over the west Londoners, who chanted his name in a much-needed victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chelsea midfielder Enzo Fernandez had a barrage of objects hurled at him from the away end as he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-181164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}