Chelsea Mission to sign every top youngster on the planet was taken with the shock acquisitions of the sporty CP duo Dario Esgo and Geovany Quenda in the early this month.
The blues separated with a combined £ 62.3 m to sign the talented couple. The 20-year-old midfielder Esgo will move to Stamford Bridge this summer, while the 17-year-old winger Quenda will go to England in 2026.
Here, 90 minutes Take a closer look at both players what makes them something special and why Chelsea fans should be so enthusiastic about their upcoming arrivals.
Midfielder Esgo is born and sporty. Growing up in Lisbon and came to the club at the age of nine, his talent was almost immediately apparent. He was a regular integral part of the academy and quickly climbed through the ranks.
Just six days after his 16th birthday and not yet for the reserves of Sporting, Esgo was received his senior debut. He became the youngest player in the history of the club in March 2021 and, after the last whistle, collapsed on the square in tears on the field after working on the event that had just changed his career.
“Nothing has changed in me,” he said Jornal Sporting After his debut. “What I have to do is increasingly difficult and difficult to stay there. It is not the most difficult to get there, but stay there. I will work for that. What has happened in the past is in the past. Now we have to look at New Horizons and goals.”
First and foremost, a defensive midfielder who was compared to Moises Caicedo because he is able to regain the possession of the ball, describes himself as a “player who likes to play the ball out of behind and drives it forward”. You will see how he crunches into a duel, drives 40 meters and slit through an intelligent pass through the eye.
Like Quenda, Essugo impressed his maturity. He chose Las Palmas last summer and openly admitted that he had exploited his weaknesses from a new football style. He wants to learn through experience and did that in the 2024/25 season.
However, what distinguishes him from the rest for a long time is his excellent position awareness. Esgo is not only a gear in a machine, but he is proud to play an important role in the setup of his site, and this should help his transition to life at Chelsea. Enzo Maresca demands a lot of tactical intelligence from his players, and Esgo has shown that he has it in abundance.
ESGO can initially be expected to offer CAICEDO a few covers, but this is only a pair of pairs in the name. Chelsea has no one who is able to reproduce the defensive talents of the Ecuadorian and look far weaker if Caicedo is exhausting or not available. Therefore, there should be regular minutes to keep both players fresh and ensure that Chelsea’s defensive levels never drop.
Quenda was born in Guinea-Bissau in 2007 and moved to Portugal as a teenager and wasted little time to show his potential. Those who are familiar with their origin tell a story of an unknown child who develops a game in jeans and running circles for his opponents. The Lisbon outfit Damaisese torn it open without hesitation.
Both Benfica and Sporting soon contacted and it was the former who initially sealed the signature of Quenda. The young winger blinded tournaments for two years and was supposed to extend his time with Benfica when the Portuguese team resisted a promise to accommodate a 13-year-old Quenda in her academy. The door was opened to wore to grab a valuable capital from its violent rivals and accepted it.
Quenda is overcrowded by natural talents. He brings everything you want from a winger – “He has a great relationship with the goal and is very good against one,” said youth coach Fabio Roque Sky Sport – But that would never be enough to break under Ruben Amorim in sports, which demands discipline and immense work rate from all of his players.
Quenda rose in its strong mentality to the challenge. The adolescent recognized the gift he had with the ball at his feet, but accepted a weakness that was taken possession, and so he had to correct the gap in his game.
“A feature that he didn’t have before but has now perfected is defended,” said Godfather Basaula Lemba Zerozero. “Before that, he only played forward from midfield, but now he can combine attack with defense. He came from an African country where she only appreciates the ball at her feet, so he had to get used to a somewhat different system. More demanding.”
Quenda appreciates the ugly side of the game, perhaps at the beginning of his career, when his breakthrough came more as a wing defender than a traditional winger. Reports State Quenda wanted to return to his natural attack position and help Chelsea to sign Manchester United for his signature.
Compared to Arsenal star Bukayo Saka, Quenda has already had a big impact on senior football for his dominating Domining on the Wing. He has the youngest striker of all time – before a certain Cristiano Ronaldo – a regular starter in the Champions League and was already part of the senior squad in Portugal.
Sports fans were destroyed when Quenda limited his future elsewhere. In addition to the early teammate Estevao Willian, he is celebrated as one of the best footballers in his age group, and Chelsea supporters understandably drool about the prospect of exploiting his astronomical potential at Stamford Bridge.
For Chelsea with Quenda and Essugo in the rows, the future is bright, but perhaps more important is that the present seems to be quite exciting.