João Pedro is not quite the full No 9 that Chelsea have bet the house on in times past. But the Brazilian is the latest signing to try to establish himself at a club where just about everyone is expendable, in a position that has been the hardest to fill.
He may even start in Tuesday evening’s Club World Cup semi-final having been summoned from holiday for a medical and then propelled into the quarter-final as a substitute. His performance against Palmeiras in the last 30 minutes was impressive, albeit against tired legs in the Philadelphia heat. In even more gruelling conditions, mid-afternoon in sweltering New Jersey, he will likely be called on to do the same.
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This time it is Fluminense, the club at which João Pedro spent his childhood before Watford signed him shortly after his 18th birthday. The Brazilian media at the MetLife Stadium ahead of the game far outnumbered the British or any other. This is the big one as far as they are concerned. João Pedro – or Nicolas Jackson – will be up against a Brazilian great, albeit on 40-year-old legs. Thiago Silva, formerly of Chelsea, turned professional before João Pedro turned one.
João Pedro, 23, looked like a man in form last week, and with Liam Delap suspended, it is the Brazilian or Jackson who will take the striker’s role. A £50 million signing from Brighton and Hove Albion, he has already played a lot of football for one so young – more than 200 senior games. He ended his Brighton career outside the squad having had a training ground clash, circumstances unspecified, with team-mate Jan Paul van Hecke.
“I think the people who know me, know my character, but when two players want to win, these things happen and this is normal,” said João Pedro, speaking on Monday for the first time about the incident. “It was just two players in the moment, we both wanted to win.”
João Pedro has played more than 200 senior games aged just 23 – Reuters/Kyle Ross
He reminded all concerned that he was the top goalscorer in the Europa League group stage last season. Of interest to Arsenal, he has had to bide his time, having spent three years at Watford in the Championship and Premier League. Enzo Maresca said that while he viewed Jackson as a conventional No 9, the Chelsea manager saw João Pedro differently. “Joao can play in all the attacking positions for us,” Maresca said. “He can play wide, he can play side to pitch [wide], he can play as a No 9.”
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At modern Chelsea, not much time is afforded before judgment is reached and players are traded. While Delap has the greater pressure in this regard, there are none who have been able to replicate the impact of Didier Drogba or, to a lesser extent, and later, Diego Costa. Some big names have come and gone – Andriy Shevchenko, Fernando Torres, Alvaro Morata, Romelu Lukaku – with the role having proven just too big for them.
“João, Liam, Nico, the ones that we have at the moment, they know exactly about No 9 at Chelsea,” Maresca said. “But I said already many times… I prefer to have four or five players scoring 10-12 goals each, than just one striker scoring 40 goals. So, you can see last year, what we have done with Noni [Madueke], what we have done with Enzo Fernández. And next season we expect more goals from all our attacking players. But for sure the ones that are playing as a No 9 with us, they know exactly Chelsea’s style.”
Enzo Maresca says he expects goals from all his players, not just the strikers – Getty Images/Darren Walsh
Madueke’s situation will be instructive to João Pedro, Delap and their fellow summer signing Jamie Gittens. Madueke, signed in January 2023, and now an England international, is designated tradeable – with Arsenal and Newcastle United weighing up a possible transfer. Maresca said that Madueke was still in his plans for the next few days, should they reach Sunday’s final, but with a caveat. “I don’t have any doubt that, if we need Noni, he is going to help us,” he said. “At the same moment I can understand that, as a human being, when there are many noises around you it’s not easy. But hopefully he can deal with that.”
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Romeo Lavia is still not fit. Levi Colwill is also suspended. But even so Chelsea are strong favourites to make the final against Real Madrid or Paris St-Germain. In the MetLife stadium on Monday the famous boxing announcer Michael Buffer was warming up, another Fifa signing that it hopes will give it cut-through in the US.
“We are ugly ducklings in financial terms,” said the Fluminense manager Renato Gaucho, “Fluminense earns 10 per cent of the revenue of these [European] clubs. They are in the position to buy all these major players.”
One of the latest for Chelsea is a Fluminense old boy himself. João Pedro certainly began his Chelsea career on Friday as a man in a hurry to make an impression and recent history should tell him that he needs to do so sooner rather than later.
