Chelsea of England’s latest Nigerian-born rising sensation, Faustino Anjorin has admitted that he struggled to adjust to the coach’s instruction for him to feature from a different role on his UEFA Champions League debut, but acknowledged how happy he was to come through unscathed, megasportsarena.com reports.
Indeed, Anjorin appeared to overcome early blushes as he settled in well and dazzled to a large extent in The Blues’ clash with Krasnodar of Russia earlier this week, even as he disclosed that he knew from the squad’s last training session that he would make his full debut for Chelsea.
He, however, further pointed out that he actually thought he would only be named among the twelve substitutes, when Chelsea coach, Frank Lampard invited him to join the first team in training, and the Nigerian-born England youth international admitted he was pleasantly surprised with the turn of events that eventually came his way.
Subsequently, while his family watched from the stands, Anjorin put in a matured performance against the Russian opponents before making way for Olivier Giroud in the 80th minute, and the box-to-box midfielder confessed that he was initially feeling shaky when Lampard deployed him as a left-sided winger, as he had not been familiar with playing from that position.
Anjorin, who is set to be involved more with Chelsea’s first team in the coming weeks, especially with Hakim Ziyech and Callum Hudson-Odoi still recovering from injuries, posited excitedly: “It was different and it took me a while to get used to the position.
Anjorin told Chelsea’s official website: “I got called in for training so I had some suspicions but at first I thought I’d be on the bench. When we put the team out in training, he said “Tino, left wing” and that’s when I was like “am I starting?”
“After that, Frank came up to me and asked if I was excited for my debut. I thought on the ball I did well and off the ball I could have been a bit better but obviously that’s just me having not played there very often. It’s a performance I can definitely improve on.”
Anthony Joshua