Chelsea's 2024-25 player of the season: Moises Caicedo

New York Times

a day ago

Who is the best player in the Premier League never to have featured in the Champions League?
It is hard to think of a worthier answer to this particular question than Moises Caicedo, but he will not be eligible for much longer. Chelsea will be back in Europe's elite club competition next season, and the soft-spoken but tough-tackling Ecuador international might be the single most significant reason why.
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Caicedo is the only member of Enzo Maresca's young squad to start all 38 of Chelsea's Premier League matches in 2024-25. The last Chelsea player to achieve the feat was Cesar Azpilicueta in 2018-19, and the last midfielder to do it was Frank Lampard in 2004-05. Joining that exclusive club is a testament to the 23-year-old's endurance, but also to his vital importance.
He has been the ever-present reference point for Maresca's midfield, around which an inverted full-back can roam, ahead of which Cole Palmer and Enzo Fernandez can focus the bulk of their energies on the final third without worrying that Chelsea's defence is liable to be exposed. At times, it has felt as if he holds the entire team together — even on the occasions when he has been the nominal right-back inverting into midfield next to Romeo Lavia.
'When you've got Caicedo next to you, it's a dream, really,' Palmer told Sky Sports, as reported by MSN, after Chelsea's 3-1 win over Liverpool earlier this month. 'From the start of the season until now, he's been our best player. He's a machine. He wins everything back (for the team), always gives 100 per cent every day, he's humble, he's nice to everyone, and everyone loves him.'
Palmer would have had a strong case to retain his Chelsea player of the season crown if he had managed to carry his 2024 production into 2025. Fernandez has had excellent stretches of form under Maresca this season. Marc Cucurella has bolstered his Stamford Bridge cult-hero credentials by darting upfield from left-back to score several key goals. Levi Colwill has been a fixture in Maresca's defence and scored the most important goal of the season against Nottingham Forest to seal a fourth-place finish.
Yet it is a mark of just how good Caicedo has been that among his team-mates and Chelsea supporters, there was no real debate before the voting and no argument after he swept the board for men's first team awards at the club's awards ceremony earlier this month.
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Midfielders who do their best work winning the ball back can sometimes be overlooked for individual credit, but not at Chelsea. This is the club where Claude Makelele was adored, where Nemanja Matic became a revered two-time Premier League champion, and where N'Golo Kante regularly drew gasps from the Stamford Bridge crowd as his otherworldly ability to take the ball from opponents cemented him as the most uniquely dominant midfielder of his generation.
Caicedo, with his prime years still ahead of him, has already done enough to distinguish himself as part of that proud lineage. His aggression can sometimes get the better of him, and there are moments when he is overly ambitious in his attempts to poke the ball away. But relatively regular yellow cards are a small price to pay as he engages in the process of exploring the limits of his destructive talents.
Opponents already respect his ability to disrupt or derail their attacks, and Chelsea's vast defensive improvement, impossible to ignore under Maresca, has a lot to do with Caicedo.
'Moi is just breaking up everything and making everything look so easy,' Colwill told Chelsea's official YouTube channel after last month's 1-0 win over rivals Tottenham. 'If I had a mic on me when I'm playing, all you'd hear is, 'Wow, Moi'. That's all I do because he makes it so easy for us in defence because he stops everything before it gets to us.'
Caicedo's consistent aggression is all the more important at the heart of a young, technical Chelsea team that is often accused of lacking physicality and bite. On good days and bad, he sets the tone without the ball, as well as directing possession with poise and polish.
Maresca has already publicly claimed that he is the best defensive midfielder in the world, and any Premier League team of the 2024-25 season which does not include Caicedo raises eyebrows at Stamford Bridge.
The question going into next season is not whether he is ready for the Champions League, but whether the Champions League is ready for him.