'I need to be honest': Mauricio Pochettino tells 22-year-old Chelsea player he needs to smile more
Mauricio Pochettino made a fascinating claim about Chelsea’s Armando Broja after the weekend victory against Preston.
The Blues safely made it through the FA Cup third-round phase with Saturday’s 4-0 victory at home to Championship club Preston.
Despite an underwhelming first-half, the hosts turned on the style in the second-half at Stamford Bridge with four unanswered goals.
Armando Broja, 22, scored just his second goal of the season to break the deadlock versus Preston. It was a remarkable header from the young centre-forward, too.
But his performance did earn an intriguing response from Chelsea head coach Mauricio Pochettino after the cup tie.
Pochettino claimed in his post-mach interview that he wants to see Chelsea striker Broja smile more on the pitch.
When asked how important it was for the 22-year-old to score against Preston, Pochettino responded via Fooball.London: “It’s really important for him but I need to be honest, I think he needs to use this type of game to improve. Not only in his fitness or his capacity for work ethic, he needs to step up and move forward and smile more and be more positive in the way he needs to improve in his game. The potential is amazing, we are talking about a young striker here in England or Europe, with one of the most potential. He needs to push himself, and we are going to try to help, to realise it’s never enough and work really hard.
“… My English is not good. I said to him when you go out there smile, because you score. It’s a point, don’t take in a negative way, it’s a positive way. Always we joke about him needing to smile or laugh to put inside himself more good energy and be more happy.”
Armando Broja needs to smile more
We noticed a bit more of a spring in Broja’s step after his goal against Preston, which certainly did help relieve some pressure off his shoulders.
There’s an expectation on the young attacker to score a lot more goals, but it’s been a very stop-start campaign so far.
With Nicolas Jackson away at the Africa Cup of Nations, Broja’s got to seize this opportunity to impress. It sounds like Pochettino is trying to give him a bit of an extra nudge, too.
Speaking on The London Is Blue podcast this week, journalist Nizaar Kinsella reported that clubs are interested in signing Broja.
Our guess is things could look quite different if he scores a few more in this next sequence of fixtures.
from Breaking Chelsea News and Updates - The Chelsea Chronicle https://ift.tt/y0eKuta
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