"I'm happy to play UCL" - No, you won't

There are so many of them that at times it’s hard to put ourselves in the players’ shoes and ask the question – why do they all want so badly to join Chelsea? It’s not because the club is small or lacking ambition – far from it – but rather because many of them get lost in the crowd at Stamford Bridge and never see their moment arrive.

Whether the same will happen to Facundo Buonanotte remains to be seen, but the latest summer signing of the London club felt the consequences of an overcrowded squad after just three days.

On Wednesday afternoon, Chelsea submitted their Champions League squad list to UEFA, and the name of the Argentine attacking midfielder was missing. Normally, this wouldn’t be unusual – after all, the London club only brought him on a dry loan until the end of the season as an emergency solution – but the situation became awkward since Buonanotte had just said at his presentation three days earlier how much he was looking forward to playing in the Champions League.

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“My first impression was – this is incredible. I’m a player who loves to have the ball and link up with teammates. I spoke with Enzo, his message to me was important because he’s one of the captains. I want to help my teammates, the manager, and the coaches in any way they need me, and I hope we can win trophies. I’m very happy because I’ll be playing in the Champions League for the first time, and I hope we can have a great season,” Buonanotte told the club’s website in a statement that went viral on social media as soon as the news broke in the English press that he would not be registered for Europe’s elite competition.

Whether he spoke “off the cuff” without first discussing Maresca’s plans for him, or if the Chelsea manager was forced to adjust things afterwards, we’ll likely never know. What’s certain is that just days before joining Chelsea, the Brighton player had an agreed move to Leeds, where he would almost certainly have had a central role. At Stamford Bridge, by contrast, he arrived as a low-cost, stopgap solution after Chelsea missed out on their primary target, Xavi Simons, who ended up at Tottenham.

Among the forwards who did make the list are Pedro Neto, Liam Delap, Joao Pedro, Estevao, Alejandro Garnacho, and Marc Guiu – whom Chelsea initially loaned to Sunderland before recalling him three weeks later after Delap suffered an injury.

Chelsea, incidentally, had to register 24 players, one fewer than the allowed maximum, since the squad only includes three homegrown players – Reece James, Trevoh Chalobah, and Levi Colwill – instead of the required four.