{"id":8548,"date":"2026-05-15T01:06:02","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T01:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=8548"},"modified":"2026-05-15T01:06:02","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T01:06:02","slug":"chelsea-boss-tips-pedro-to-be-brazils-world-cup-number-nine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=8548","title":{"rendered":"Chelsea boss tips Pedro to be Brazil&#8217;s World Cup number nine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-td-block-uid=\"tdi_65\">\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<p><strong>Calum McFarlane has tipped Chelsea forward Joao Pedro to be Brazil\u2019s number nine at this summer\u2019s World Cup.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Pedro has enjoyed an impressive debut season at Chelsea since arriving from Brighton in a \u00a360m deal last summer. The 24-year-old has scored 20 goals in 48 appearances across all competitions, form which has placed him in contention for a prominent World Cup role.<\/p>\n<p>Brazil are yet to settle on a their first-choice forward for the 2026 World Cup, but McFarlane believes Pedro has what it takes.<\/p>\n<p>The interim Chelsea coach said Pedro had \u2018settled into\u2019 the position at Chelsea and has \u2018everything you\u2019d want from a top number nine\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Pedro has won eight caps for Brazil to date but is yet to open his goalscoring account for the five-time world champions.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at his pre-match press conference ahead of this weekend\u2019s FA Cup final against Manchester City, McFarlane said: \u201cHe has had a great year and played many different positions, but he seems to have settled into that number nine role, and he\u2019s got everything you\u2019d want from a top number nine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a big summer coming up for him with the World Cup with Brazil, but he\u2019s been excellent for Chelsea, and hopefully we continue that for the last three games.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Read \u2013\u00a0Chelsea boss McFarlane backs Palmer ahead of FA Cup final<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>See more \u2013\u00a0The Premier League managerial carousel: Predicting who goes where<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong>Follow the Football Faithful on Social Media:<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Facebook | Instagram | <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FootyFaithful_\">Twitter<\/a> | YouTube | TikTok<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.tiktok.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Calum McFarlane has tipped Chelsea forward Joao Pedro to be Brazil\u2019s number nine at this&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8548","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\/8548","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=8548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}