{"id":10356,"date":"2026-05-19T01:38:47","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T01:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=10356"},"modified":"2026-05-19T01:38:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T01:38:47","slug":"why-has-chelsea-player-been-left-out-of-brazil-world-cup-squad-by-carlo-ancelotti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=10356","title":{"rendered":"Why has Chelsea player been left out of Brazil World Cup squad by Carlo Ancelotti?"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The Brazilian squad for the 2026 World Cup has been named. And it has come with a few surprises as Carlo Ancelotti tries to inspire them to their sixth victory at football\u2019s biggest tournament. Chelsea players were expected to play a major part for Brazil this time around. Instead, it looks like they are not going to have a role at all.<\/p>\n

Estevao was always going to miss out due to his injury. It is unfortunate, as the youngster was slated to have a role. But two names that were expected to be there today and are not are Joao Pedro and Andrey Santos.<\/p>\n

That is a surprising call from Ancelotti to be very honest and one has to wonder why that call has been taken by the veteran manager. Is it a choice that he wanted to make or one that he had to?<\/p>\n

Why has Joao Pedro been left out after a tremendous season?<\/h2>\n

Based on form, Pedro should most definitely be in that squad. But then, let\u2019s not overlook the fact that he did seem to suffer a bit of an injury during the FA Cup final against Manchester City.<\/p>\n

It did not look serious as he tried to play through it at first before being subbed off. Could it have been serious enough for him not to be ready for the World Cup in time and for Ancelotti to drop him from the squad as a result?<\/p>\n

If so, that is unfortunate. Pedro has been brilliant this season, scoring 23 goals since joining Chelsea in the summer. Many expected him to be the starting number 9 for Brazil at the World Cup. So, this might be a hard pill to swallow, no matter what the reason.<\/p>\n

Why has Andrey Santos been dropped after debut Chelsea campaign?<\/h2>\n

While there is a doubt over the fitness situation of Joao Pedro, the same cannot be said for Santos. He was in the matchday squad for the FA Cup final but failed to come off the bench.<\/p>\n

In the eyes of many, Santos has failed to meet expectations in his debut season for Chelsea. He had been phenomenal for Strasbourg on loan in the previous campaign and one of the best midfielders in Ligue 1.<\/p>\n

He has failed to match those levels in Chelsea colours. The midfielder has largely been a squad player. He gets starts when the likes of Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez are not available or need some rest.<\/p>\n

So, his absence from the World Cup squad does feel like a choice on the part of Ancelotti rather than anything to do with outside circumstances that prevented the manager from picking him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Sourav<\/div>\n

Sourav Mahanty has covered teams like Chelsea, Celtic, Real Madrid, Manchester United, PSG and more over a career that has now lasted a decade.
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\nHis work has been featured on Sports Illustrated, Athlon Sports, SB Nation, FanSided, The Sportster and aggregated through Bleacher Report and NewsNow.
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\nOutside of football, he is also interested in basketball, cricket and professional wrestling.<\/p>\n

View all articles \u2192<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Brazilian squad for the 2026 World Cup has been named. And it has come…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}