Argentina’s World Cup Breakout Star Set For 2023 Transfer

For a while, the breakout player at this World Cup looked like it would be the Croatian defender, Joško Gvardiol.

The 20-year-old RB Leipzig player had impressed with his combination of strength, speed, and intelligent positioning. The facemask he wore as a result of breaking his nose in a German Bundesliga game against Freiburg last month only added to his defensive superhero status.

Despite his struggle to contain Lionel Messi in the semifinal, Gvardiol remains one of the standout players from this World Cup having played a significant role in Croatia’s progress to said semifinal, but a player on the team who knocked them out, Argentina’s Enzo Fernandez, is now more likely to be considered the breakout player and win the Young Player Award.

Many fans back home in Argentina will already have been aware of Fernandez. During his time with his boyhood club, River Plate, he picked up an Argentine league winners medal and while on loan at Defensa y Justicia he won the Copa Sudamericana in 2020, when he was also named in that tournament’s team of the year.

By the time Fernandez was being courted by European clubs, he was considered one of the best players in Argentina and one of the best on the South American continent as a whole.

Amid interest from across Europe, Fernandez signed for Portuguese side Benfica. A move to a league just below the UEFA top five of England, Germany, Spain, Italy and France, is often a wise one for a player moving from South America to Europe.

It allows the player to settle with less of the spotlight on them, and also gives suitors in those other leagues a chance to monitor the player’s progress and adaptation to European football more closely.

Many clubs will have been in touch with Benfica since they signed the 21-year-old midfielder. It would not be a surprise to see him move to one of them in 2023, with the Portuguese club making a tidy, if not huge profit, having paid around $16 million to River Plate for his services.

Fernandez is sometimes seen as a defensive midfielder. He does have the ability to play in deep roles and do an effective job off the ball, winning it back and closing down opposition attackers, but to label him solely as defensive would be doing him a disservice.

He is named after River Plate legend Enzo Francescoli, and though he is not quite at the same level of the great Uruguayan playmaker, he does have plenty of playmaking skills.

It would be no surprise to see him deployed as an out-and-out attacking playmaker or No. 10 in the future, but at the moment he is most effective when doing a bit of everything in the middle of the field, giving himself a platform from which to unleash his creative talents.

This combination of technique and guile, coupled with work rate off the ball has seen Fernandez become a key part of Argentina’s run to the 2022 World Cup final.

He netted his first Argentina goal against Mexico in the group stage and has made his first starts for his country at the tournament. He was named in the lineup for the four games leading up to the final, having come off the bench in the first two.

Watching him as part of this team in Qatar, it’s difficult to believe that he was not already an Argentina regular before this tournament. He is still to reach double figures for appearances for his country at senior level, but will do should he appear in the final as expected.

Fernandez has been most heavily linked with a move to Liverpool, a club that already has a relationship with Benfica having sent plenty of money in their direction for Darwin Núñez during the previous transfer window.

Whichever club manages to secure his services from Benfica will be getting a player who has risen from being a promising young player at River Plate to a key player for his national team going into a World Cup final in the space of just two years.

The way he has taken it all in his stride is part of the reason he his so highly regarded, highly sought after, and likely to take the Young Player Award at this World Cup, regardless of the result in the final.