Carlo Ancelotti is probably not the type to have endured a long August of the soul in the wake of Brazil’s flubbed World Cup campaign this summer.
You imagine there were more poolside cocktails than hours spent staring at himself in a dusty mirror. As such, the 67-year-old Italian looked happy enough to get back to work at the start of the European season a couple of weekends ago.
Ancelotti was in France for the Ligue 1 game between Lille and Paris Saint-Germain. Then he hopped over to London for Tottenham Hotspur vs Newcastle United and Chelsea’s Premier League match against Brighton and Hove Albion.
In those three games, he got a sight of a couple of the men he will rely on to take Brazil back to where they expect to be in four years’ time. One was his captain, Marquinhos, who scored a late equaliser for PSG. The other was Chelsea striker Joao Pedro, a player he surely now regrets leaving out of his World Cup squad.
Ancelotti also saw the teenager he believes to be the future of Brazilian football. He saw him walk out of the tunnel at Stamford Bridge. He saw him sit down on the bench. Ninety minutes later, he saw him walk back down the tunnel, still dressed in his tracksuit.
This could have been a one-off, a slice of bad luck. Ancelotti, though, could have spent the past four weeks in Europe and still barely caught a glance of Estevao Willian, Brazil’s would-be attacking talisman. The £51million winger has played just 16 minutes across Chelsea’s first three league games of the season, becoming a minor cause celebre in the process.
Estevao made a bright cameo against Arsenal (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
Witness the reaction to the 19-year-old’s sparky cameo against Arsenal at the weekend, which prompted former Chelsea and England striker Daniel Sturridge to issue something like a pep talk on live television.
“Keep doing what you’re doing,” urged Sturridge, speaking as a pundit on Sky Sports. “Keep going. Don’t lose faith in your abilities. You might not get as many minutes as you want but we know the talent is there. We know you’re a top player. Just keep plugging away.”
We are, it must be said, very early in the season.
Chelsea, after another summer of self-guided flux, are reformulating under new coach Xabi Alonso. Three games is a small sample size. Estevao was considered to be one of a handful of ‘untouchable’ players in the transfer window — not for sale at any price.
Still, this is not nothing.
Four months ago, nearing the end of an impressive first campaign in England, Estevao was untouchable on the pitch, too. If not for an untimely hamstring injury, he might easily have been one of the stars of the World Cup in North America. Now he is stood plaintively at the window, looking in at the roaring hearth and the feast, starting Carabao Cup games but getting hooked at half-time with Jamie Gittens and 16-year-old academy kids. The juxtaposition is, at the very least, interesting.
There is no reason to think this is personal. Alonso made a point of praising Estevao’s mentality after the Arsenal game and hinted at opportunities to come. The issue for Estevao is that these opportunities will not come in the right-wing position he occupied last season. In Alonso’s system, that role no longer exists.
There are two possible routes back into the starting XI, both of which come with issues.
One is as a right wing-back. Pedro Neto has played there in the early weeks of the season, showing that a natural winger can do the job. Estevao looked good there after coming on against Arsenal. It helps that Alonso’s system tends to be asymmetrical — there is scope for the right wing-back to push higher up than his counterpart on the left.
“I think he can do it, if asked,” says Joao Paulo Sampaio, the head of the Palmeiras youth system that helped form Estevao and one of his early mentors, in an interview with The Athletic. “He follows instructions well and likes to contribute defensively.”
Still, this would be a new challenge. Estevao is grittier than he looks but might not be cut out for the kind of raging physical duels wing-backs often have to face. He never played in the position at academy level or for Palmeiras’ first team. “He didn’t have the physique for it,” says Sampaio. “We also like our most talented players to be close to goal.”
Estevao did play a lot of youth games as a No 10. And, while he made his senior breakthrough on the wing, there were soon calls for him to be moved inside.
“He has too much talent to stay out wide, doing his dribbles there,” former Brazil coach Vanderlei Luxemburgo told the Charla podcast in 2024. “I wouldn’t waste a player like him in that way. Playing more centrally, he can drift left, drift right, find the spaces, run at people, do what he wants.”
Estevao celebrates scoring in a Carabao Cup match against Luton Town last month (Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)
Coincidentally, it was Chelsea’s openness to letting Estevao play there that convinced the player and his entourage that his future lay in west London. “They were the only club that saw him as a No 10,” Estevao’s agent, Andre Cury, told GloboEsporte last year. “That made a big difference.”
We can safely assume that option two is more to Estevao’s taste. For now, though, Morgan Rogers and Cole Palmer look unassailable in those positions. The mutual understanding between that pair and Joao Pedro has been an early-season highlight. Estevao is going to have to be patient, not least because Chelsea are not in Europe; there are not many midweek bones to throw to back-up players.
Estevao is a grounded kid. He has spoken about doing psychological work with his family. His religious beliefs provided succour after the disappointment of being ruled out of the World Cup, where Brazil were eliminated at the round of 16 by Norway.
There is no sense of an impending meltdown. He is in Ancelotti’s Brazil squad for upcoming friendlies against Australia and India. His star status in that environment will nourish him.
The Chelsea situation is a test, however. And it is unlikely the background noise will abate if he is not starting matches. Sturridge’s speech was one thing, but there will be more serious complaints from Brazil if people feel their great hope is being overlooked.
“We’re talking about one of the biggest talents of this generation,” says Sampaio.
“He can change a game in a couple of minutes, as you have already seen in England. When a player like Estevao is left out, we have to ask ourselves what kind of football we want to see.”
