Chelsea: Enzo Maresca issues Wesley Fofana update after freak injury and explains Trevoh Chalobah substitution

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·9. Dezember 2025

Chelsea: Enzo Maresca issues Wesley Fofana update after freak injury and explains Trevoh Chalobah substitution

The Frenchman was forced off with a freak injury after replacing Trevoh Chalobah at half-time in Chelsea’s defeat by Atalanta

Enzo Maresca has given an update on the severity of the eye injury that forced substitute Wesley Fofana off against Atalanta.

The Chelsea manager also revealed who he would have brought on if he'd had another substitution left to use afterwards.

With Trevoh Chalobah already on a yellow card and having played a lot of minutes in recent matches, Maresca made the decision to bring the Englishman off and replace him with Fofana at half-time in Tuesday night’s 2-1 defeat to Atalanta in the Champions League.

But Fofana lasted just 30 minutes before he had to be replaced himself, by Tosin Adarabioyo at centre-back, forcing Chelsea into an unplanned use of their final allotted substitution.

Fofana had suffered a blow on his eye which made it difficult to see when, in a freak accident, he and Atalanta goalscorer Gianluca Scamacca fell to the ground after a duel and one of the studs on the striker’s boot made contact with right eye.

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He could later be seen holding his eye and struggling to see out of it.

“He had a problem with his eye,” Maresca said of Fofana, who has endured his fair share of injury setbacks during three years and three months at Chelsea.

“It’s quite bad. He’s struggling to see. Hopefully he can be available for Everton on Saturday.”

Wesley Fofana was forced off against Atalanta

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Maresca added: “The change of Tosin was because we needed to change Wes. For sure, with one more change there would have been a chance for Estevao [Willian] or Andrey [Santos] to come on and potentially change the game.”

The Chelsea head coach also confirmed that Chalobah did not suffer an injury and that his half-time substitution was partly pre-planned and partly a response to the fact he was playing on a yellow card.

“It was a little bit planned, because Trev is playing every game,” Maresca said. “So it was to give [him] a little bit [of time] off. Also, because Trev was on a yellow card, so for both reasons.”