Chelsea Players at the FIFA World Cup: Final Round of 32 Games

As the round of 32 at this summer's FIFA World Cup finally comes to a close, there has been important action for a couple of Chelsea players. Let's take a look at how things went for both players, both individually and collectively. 

To kick things off, on Thursday night, winger Pedro Neto was again named in the Portugal XI by manager Roberto Martinez, starting on the right hand side of a front three with Rafael Leao on the other flank. Now if only Chelsea had him on the wings instead. 

A very positive start to the first half saw Portugal dominating but failing to make their territory and chance creation count, and Croatia had grown into things in the second half. The 2018 finalists then began dominating the second halves, and took a deserved lead after 53 minutes of the game through veteran Ivan Perisic. Former Chelsea midfielder Mateo Kovacic was pulling the strings in there. 

After that, Martinez rang the chances, and four players - including Neto - were hooked after 63 minutes. Just a few minutes later, Portugal equalised through the penalty spot to make it 1-1. 

Despite this, Kovacic continued to dominate and remind the Blues faithful of what they are missing in SW6, but they somehow did not retake the lead. And well, you know what football is like, and Portugal scored a winner in the 94th minute. Around 15 minutes earlier, Croatia had had a goal controversially disallowed for offside. 

It was not as controversial as the 12th minute of stoppage time, however, where they again had a goal disallowed for the barest of margins, if at all. In the end, Neto's side scraped through to the last 16. 

On Monday, at 20:00 BST, they will take on European Champions, Spain. If he starts, he is likely to be directly up against Marc Cucurella. He would surely love to get one over the recently departed Chelsea left back. 

Then, on Friday night, Argentina took on Cape Verde, with Enzo Fernandez named in the starting XI. Him waking up to the news that Real Madrid had publicly confirmed they are not interested in signing him would be his biggest shock of the day, but no. It was the fact that minnows Cape Verde took Argentina all the way to extra time, with the World Champions eventually prevailing 3-2. 

Truth be told, the 25-year old was terrible, and reminded everyone that Chelsea selling him would not be a bad thing at all.