Enzo Fernandez Joins Manchester City for £125m Transfer

Enzo Fernandez arrives as Manchester City’s new £125m standard-bearer, and the welcome inside the dressing room has already been loud.

According to manager Enzo Maresca, several City players spent the final days of the transfer window asking the same question: is Enzo coming?

They wanted him in. They wanted to play with him.

The 25-year-old Argentina international completed a joint-British record £125m move from Chelsea to City on deadline day, reuniting with Maresca after their time together at Stamford Bridge. Now he is in line to make his debut at Etihad Stadium on Saturday against newly promoted Coventry City.

“I know Enzo quite well and I know what he can bring to the team,” Maresca said. “He is a winner – a winner's mentality and knows how to win [after] the World Cup, Club World Cup.”

That pedigree is exactly why City’s senior core pushed for the deal to happen. Maresca didn’t hide how eager the squad was.

“I just said he is a winner and when you belong to a squad and another winning player arrives, they are always happy,” he explained. “I can promise you that in the last four or five days four or five players from the squad were asking if he is coming or not because they want him to be with us. It's very important that he is with us and we are 100% happy with that.”

At Chelsea, Maresca had handed Fernandez the captain’s armband. At City, though, the hierarchy looks different. Ruben Dias has been confirmed as the new club captain, replacing Bernardo Silva after his summer departure, with Erling Haaland, Marc Guehi and Gianluigi Donnarumma forming the rest of the leadership group.

Fernandez will not wear the armband here, but he walks into a team built around serial winners. That suits him. In an in-house interview released on Thursday, he said he had always “dreamed of being at a club as big as City”, a line widely read as a pointed remark towards his former club.

His mind had been made up for some time. Fernandez’s desire to leave Stamford Bridge has been clear since the turn of the year, and even talks this summer with Chelsea manager Xabi Alonso could not persuade him to stay.

“In football many things happen,” Alonso said. “With Enzo we have had conversations and always with respect. What he has done for the club has been great, but now it's time to move forward. We have players with quality in every position and now we are ready to go.”

City, meanwhile, have gone big. Very big.

The champions smashed a transfer window record with £458m spent on new signings, including a staggering £327m to rebuild the midfield around Fernandez, Elliot Anderson and Ayyoub Bouaddi. Out wide, Iliman Ndiaye and Allan have arrived to add thrust and creativity, while Geronimo Rulli comes in as back-up goalkeeper. Player sales helped offset the outlay, bringing in more than £300m.

Maresca made a point of crediting the club’s powerbrokers.

“I am very happy for the effort from the ownership, [chairman] Khaldoon [Al Mubarak] and [director of football] Hugo [Viana]. Very happy,” he said. “In the last days, Iliman and Enzo arrived, and now the squad is complete – it's finished. Now it is time to work.”

The chequebook is closed. The questions around Fernandez’s future have been answered. The next one comes on Saturday: how quickly can City’s new £125m midfielder start dictating games in sky blue?