Chelsea fans stunned as £40m man chosen to start alongside teenagers | OneFootball

When Chelsea announced their Development Squad team to face Reading in the PL2 today, there was an unexpected but familiar name in the lineup.

Axel Disasi, who was a year ago featuring in the B team in the Conference League, has since been sent to the bomb squad, training separately from the first team. Without any warning, he’s been dropped into the Development Squad team today, captaining the side.

Disasi was signed from Monaco for £40m just a couple of years ago, but has fallen out of favour. The club exiled him to try to force a move this summer, but it didn’t materialise. The Frenchman is now training separately and hoping January brings an exit.

You can see Disasi leading the team for pre-match handshakes in the clip embedded here:

Chelsea coming off badly from Disasi affair

Chelsea’s Development Squad team to face Reading.

The whole affair is a little embarrassing and sordid, let’s face it. We understand the club’s stance here, and nobody feels too sorry for players earning tens of thousands of pounds a week to play football, especially when we can all be pretty sure that a move is coming sooner rather than later.

But ignoring all that, it feels a pretty shabby way to treat someone. Football is a business, but we all know it’s more than that too, and this sort of things just feels wrong.

In other news…

Enzo Maresca has some interesting personnel decisions today, including the big one over whether to play Reece James for a third time in a week. We’ve got our predicted XI here.

We don’t think Maresca will start Estevao today, as you can see, but that’s just what he’s been told to do by some pundits who can’t believe the talented Brazilian isn’t an undisputed starter yet.