A SOUTHAMPTON mascot brutally left Cesar Azpilicueta hanging in the tunnel before Chelsea’s visit to St Mary’s.
The Chelsea captain was invited to shake the young fan’s hand as the two teams lined up before kickoff.
But as Azpilicueta reached out to shake the mascot’s hand – he was left savagely trolled.
The defender lined up for his first Chelsea start of the season, having spent the summer pushing for a move to Barcelona.
Blues skipper Azpilicueta was benched by manager Thomas Tuchel in the first four games of the season.
But Tuchel, who handed Azpilicueta a new deal at the start of the season, admitted the call to leave the Spaniard out was tricky.
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He said: “At the moment, it is one of the toughest decisions because he trains so well and is in such good shape and status mentally.
“He is pushing everybody and is fully committed – it’s what you want on the field. But if we play 4-4-2, it’s between him or Reece James.
“It’s a luxury problem we have, but when we changed to a back five (against Leicester), we had the chance to have both of them on the pitch.
“Without tough decisions, we will get nowhere.We are used to competing for every title at Chelsea, competing at the highest level.
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“If we don’t have tough decisions, it will simply not happen.
“We hope to have 60 matches, but to have 60 matches, we have to have a squad where everybody is ready to place and have a lot of difficult decisions.
“On Saturday, we ended up, more or less, in a situation where we had almost no more central defenders on the bench.
“Now we had N’Golo injured and Conor Gallagher with a yellow-red card.
“So there are not enough tough decisions at the moment. I would like to have more of these. That would mean we are in full competition mode.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
