Ancelotti happy with Benayoun, youth and overseas players at Chelsea

If a manager allows a player to leave his club and replaces him with another, one would expect the manager to say that the incoming player is the better of the two. Having said that, Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti made a big statement yesterday by saying that he believes Yossi Benayoun to be better than Joe Cole.

Fantastic

“Joe Cole at Chelsea had a fantastic career but this year is another story. We are happy to have Yossi here. Joe was quicker, with respect to Yossi, but tactically I think Yossi is better.”

Last season, whilst Joe Cole was struggling with injury Ancelotti described him as a genius and said he was certain that he would remain with Chelsea. That didn’t happen and Cole left for Liverpool, citing ‘political reasons’ rather than footballing reasons, and Benayoun went the other way.

Highly

Ancelotti has spoken highly of Benayoun.

“He’s an intelligent player, tactically he knows everything very well. I tried to put him as a right midfielder in this pre-season and he can also play in his usual position as a winger. He has to train, to improve his condition, but I think for us he is a good player.”

Cole had been at Chelsea for seven pretty successful years and was firmly a fans favourite. Many Chelsea fans were disappointed to see the twenty-eight year old go after he played over two hundred and fifty games for the club, scoring forty goals. He was not always played as regularly as fans thought he should be by a succession of Chelsea managers who struggled to find the right place for him to fit into the system they wanted to play.

Popular

The thirty year old Israel international Benayoun spent three seasons at Liverpool, playing one hundred and thirty four games and scoring twenty-nine goals. He too became a popular player with the fans and his constant substitution by Rafa Benitez when Liverpool were performing badly became a real bone of contention as he was the only player providing a creative spark.

Despite replacing an English player with one from overseas, Ancelotti also talked about the fact that the new Premier League rules restricting clubs to a squad of twenty-five players at least eight of whom must be ‘home-grown’, will have no negative effect on Chelsea.

Anomaly

The anomaly discussed the other day about the ‘home-grown’ players not having to be English is relevant in Chelsea’s case. They have youngsters Jeffrey Bruma from Holland, Patrick van Aanholt, also from Holland, Gael Kakuta from France and Fabio Borini from Italy, who all qualify as ‘home-grown’.

Ancelotti is unfazed by the rule and is happy with the quality of his younger players and the balance of overseas players.

“It is the same thing as in the Champions League so we are not surprised about this, and this rule can improve the academies in the clubs. I don’t think we have a difficulty to put a squad in. We have the right number of foreign players. I am happy because it is important for our academy, they are very good players, they need to stay with us and will have more chances this year. I know them very well. We followed them for the last year and it is the time for them to be involved in the squad. I don’t know how many games they can play this season but we need to have these young players in our squad.”