Enzo Maresca’s press conference today was dominated with disappointing news – firstly that Reece James has picked up a hamstring injury, and secondly that he’s going to be stretched in midfield with Renato Veiga and Cesare Casadei tired, plus Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez coming back late from international duty in South America.
There are some players who could take advantage of these issues however, and some who put in impressive international break performances they will want to build on. One of these was Joao Felix for Portugal, and Maresca was asked whether we could one day see Felix play alongside Cole Palmer behind a striker:
Maresca admits he’s thought about Palmer-Felix link up
“Yeah, this could be a target for the future; to see both of them playing together,” Maresca admitted. But he chose to focus more on the international players and how their performance could affect his selection when considering a game like Saturday’s where there will be a lot of absences and fatigue:
“International break is good, first of all for the ones that don’t go with their international teams so they can recover and for the ones that do go, some of them, like Joao, did fantastic.
“But Joao is doing well with us since day one. The only problem is trying to find balance when we are trying to prepare the game. For us, for all of the clubs, there is always a little bit of doubt because we do not know how they are going to come back.
“As I said, today is the first session – 48 hours before the game – that we worked with 12, 13, 14 players that were with internationals. Some of them came back this morning from Argentina, from South America, so it is not easy. We will see. We still have 48 hours.”
Lots of fans would love to see the Palmer-Felix link up. And if you’re not going to do it against a weak Leicester team in a game where you’ll be without starting players, when are you going to do it?
