Ben Jacobs exclusive claims Maresca ready to hand out 2 more teenage debuts tonight | OneFootball

We’ve just written a piece about Chelsea’s likely lineup to face Copenhagen in the Conference League tonight.

It’s a hard one to predict, as the Blues are on the one hand are focused on Sunday’s clash against Arsenal, while knowing that their 2-1 lead in this second competition is very slender indeed, and they’re facing an impressive Copenhagen team.

There are also a lot of players returning from injury, and others who have been struck by illness in the last week and haven’t trained fully. From the outside, it’s very hard to know the status of a large part of the squad and therefore who might play.

What we didn’t consider was that, beyond youngsters Tyrique George and Shim Mheuka who played from the start last week and should get more minutes today, that there could be further academy involvement.

Ben Jacobs has just dropped a really interesting exclusive for GiveMeSport, claiming that 16 yar old Reggie Walsh could make his debut tonight, with the slightly better known Genesis Antwi also in contention.

Young pair could get late sub minutes

Genesis Antwi and Reggie Walsh could make Chelsea debuts tonight.

Walsh – a central midfielder – would be the youngest player to appear for the Blues since 1967. He only turned 16 in October, shortly before making his England Under-17s debut. Mheuka became the club’s youngest starter in a European game a week ago.

With Romeo Lavia still not ready, Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo will probably play 45 minutes each, with Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall the only other option in that part of the pitch. Walsh could be a useful late reliever.

Antwi is a full back who can play on either side, which could be handy given both Malo Gusto and Reece James are doubts, and Marc Cucurella is in serious need of a rest. We don’t expect to see either of them unless we’ve got a nice cushion of goals – but it would be brilliant to end the game with a few Cobham boys on the pitch.