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Mauricio Pochettino admitted Moises Caicedo\u2019s international commitments with Ecuador have complicated the midfielder\u2019s early Chelsea career.<\/p>\n
The club paid a British record \u00a3115million to sign the 22-year-old from Brighton in August but frequent trips to South America to play for his country have limited the time he has been able to spend working with coaching staff at Cobham.<\/p>\n
He has played 14 times in all competitions since his arrival, recovering from a red card on his first appearance against West Ham to become a steady if not yet spectacular performer in the heart of midfield.<\/p>\n
Since joining Chelsea he has been called up three times by Ecuador and played in six matches, with each international window requiring a more than 11,000-mile round trip, sometimes not arriving back in London until the early hours of the day before Chelsea\u2019s next game.<\/p>\n
He revealed in an interview with the club\u2019s website this week that he spent much of his first 10 days in England alone in a hotel room in tears and suffering from homesickness, after joining the Seagulls from Independiente del Valle in his home country in January 2021 during the Covid pandemic.<\/p>\n
Restrictions on movement for people arriving into the UK meant he was unable to meet his Brighton team-mates until completing a period of quarantine, during which he phoned his parents in Ecuador asking to return home.<\/p>\n
He recovered to become one of the standout successes of the team that Roberto De Zerbi led to a club-best sixth-placed Premier League finish last campaign, sparking a bidding war between Liverpool and Chelsea in which Pochettino\u2019s side were victorious.<\/p>\n
The manager reiterated a call for patience as Caicedo navigates life at Chelsea amid a hectic World Cup qualifying schedule internationally.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we signed him we knew what is going to happen,\u201d said Pochettino. \u201cHe\u2019s an emotional guy, an emotional player that needs time to recover.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t help also the international games, travelling to Ecuador, to South America. That is really tough every single month, two or three weeks then go 10, 12 days away, then come back sometimes with some injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not an excuse but it\u2019s the reality. Now we need time. Of course I say (the team) always need to perform. That is our mentality. But in some situations like his, we need to give time and not to be unfair in the way that we assess him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Caicedo has formed a reliable partnership in midfield with Enzo Fernandez, who the club paid a then-British record \u00a3107m to sign from Benfica in January while Graham Potter was in charge.<\/p>\n
Pochettino revealed that the Argentinian World Cup winner asked for extra time off during the summer due to fatigue and was granted permission to join up late with the squad on their United States tour.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s different because Enzo arrived last January, he was with different coaches here,\u201d said the manager. \u201cHe asked when we arrived for a period of holiday because he was tired after the World Cup and everything. He joined us in North Carolina.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot judge the past. Only I can talk from when we arrived (at Chelsea). We expect all, not only (these two), all the players, even the ones not too much involved, to push their level.\u201d<\/p>\n