Nachrichten

After a couple fallow years, Chelsea are slowly increasing our numbers of senior internationals. That’s not necessarily great in terms of workload and fatigue and injury-risk, but it can be seen as a barometer for the squad’s quality and growing reputation.

Along those lines, we have a trio of players getting their England call-ups yesterday, joined by a couple more getting the call from France.

The England trio are the same as last month, with Cole Palmer, Levi Colwill, and Noni Madueke joining interim manager Lee Carsley’s squad. Palmer would eventually withdraw last month, but he’ll probably stick around this time.

“Knowing Cole for a number of years, I’ve seen how he’s progressed. Every challenge that’s been put in front of Cole, he just takes in his stride. He doesn’t get too high, he doesn’t get too low, and that’s a brilliant attribute to have as a professional footballer. It’s great to see him doing so well.”

-Lee Carsley; source: Yahoo! Sports

Carsley, and assistant Ashley Cole, also called up Dominic Solanke for the first time since he made his national team debut at age 20, just after leaving Chelsea in 2017. Congrats, Dom!

Fellow ex-Chelsea players Conor Gallagher and Marc Guéhi are also in there, as is our former trainee Declan Rice. That’s 7 of the 25 (better than one-quarter) having some sort of ties to Chelsea; not bad!

Meanwhile, Wesley Fofana and Christopher Nkunku have gotten the call from France, though Malo Gusto has to make do with the under-21 squad still.

Both Fofana and Gusto withdrew last month like Palmer, but they will likely stay now.

Good luck, all! Please don’t get hurt.