Chelsea football club defender David Luiz is now back in contention for a first team place after having been frozen out by manager Antonio Conte in the club’s last outing. Conte has called the Brazilian a “very important” player this season, yet Luiz still found himself dropped, not even given a seat on the bench and pretty much reduced to being a ball boy during the Blues’ biggest game of the season, a 1-0 home win over Manchester United two weeks ago.
Andreas Christensen filled in for the player brought back to Stamford Bridge from Paris Saint-Germain on summer transfer window deadline day 2016, and Conte hailed the replacement’s performance as amazing.
Now Luiz faces a battle with Christensen for a spot in tomorrow’s league fixture at West Bromwich Albion.
There have been numerous reports of tension between Antonio Conte and David Luiz, but the manager still disputes that idea, and maintains that his decision was about tactics on the pitch, not office politics away from the pitch.
“I repeat, it was a technical decision,” the Italian said on Friday in regards to the decision that David Luiz to football Siberia two weeks ago.
“When it’s a technical decision, every single player has to react well and accept my decision. It’s normal, this.”
Conte refused to answer a question about whether or not his relationship with his player had been affected:
“I think that I stay here to speak for the team before an important game against West Bromwich, and not to speak about one single player. I don’t like that. I like to speak about the team and the next game that we have to pay great attention to. This is the most important thing.”
Conte had a lot of praise for Christensen’s form after the last match before the international break, and he had more good things to say today: “It’s positive. Last season I didn’t have this opportunity (to rotate Luiz). This season, with Christensen, I have another opportunity, another really good opportunity, because Christensen is showing himself to be an important player for us.
“For sure, he’s only 21 years old, but he’s playing with great maturity. I hope to continue to improve in this way.”
It’s easy to understand why Conte is deflecting away from queries about his relationship with Luiz. It seems like there is probably some tension there, but bringing it to light certainly doesn’t help the situation, and would obviously be very detrimental to their Premier League title defense efforts.
Between speculation about Conte’s job security, his relationship with owner Roman Abramovich and the whole Diego Costa soap opera, there has been plenty of drama already at Stamford Bridge.
The last thing they need is more contentious situations that could possibly provide distraction.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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