{"id":544619,"date":"2026-04-22T12:43:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T12:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/544619\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T12:43:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T12:43:15","slug":"marc-cucurellas-barber-and-the-leaked-chelsea-team-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/544619\/","title":{"rendered":"Marc Cucurella’s barber and the ‘leaked’ Chelsea team news"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Chelsea<\/a> team was announced as kick-off approached before Tuesday’s game at Brighton<\/a>, the news may not have been a surprise to some.<\/p>\n

Screenshots of a post on social media platform X had been doing the rounds for hours, stating midfielder Cole Palmer and striker Joao Pedro would both be missing from the line-up. They were indeed absent.<\/p>\n

It was claimed the post came from Chelsea<\/a> defender Marc Cucurella’s barber.<\/p>\n

“[Cole] Palmer and Joao Pedro both injured tonight,” it read. “There’s your exclusive.” There was also an image of the back of Cucurella’s distinctive curly hair.<\/p>\n

In Palmer’s case, there was no public knowledge of his hamstring injury, while Joao Pedro had undergone a fitness test on the morning of the match.<\/p>\n

Rosenior is known to keep his cards close to his chest when it comes to team selection and is said by those who know him to deliberately hold pre-match news conferences two days in advance in order to keep opposing managers guessing.<\/p>\n

The post, which appeared to tag several accounts known for providing Fantasy Premier League advice, has been deleted, along with the entire account on which it appeared.<\/p>\n

Having been deleted, it cannot be independently verified but the club has not denied its authenticity when asked about the post.<\/p>\n

BBC Sport has also contacted the barber and Cucurella’s representatives for comment. <\/p>\n

It would be the third instance in which team news has reportedly been leaked from Chelsea<\/a> since Liam Rosenior’s appointment in early January.<\/p>\n

Team news got out around both legs of Chelsea<\/a>‘s Champions League tie with Paris St\u2011Germain. Rosenior said they had been “dealt with” and that they had “not come from any place of malicious intent towards me or the team”.<\/p>\n

Chelsea<\/a> are currently seventh in the Premier League table with four league matches left to play. They next play in Sunday’s FA Cup semi-final against Leeds<\/a> at Wembley Stadium. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Chelsea team was announced as kick-off approached before Tuesday’s game at Brighton, the news may not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-544619","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544619","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=544619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}