John Obi Mikel says Moises Caicedo is finally beginning to live up to expectations at Chelsea and will ‘probably’ go on to captain the club in the future.
Chelsea splashed out an eye-watering £100million on Caicedo last summer and the 22-year-old struggled across a difficult debut season as the Blues finished down in sixth in the Premier League under Mauricio Pochettino.
But Caicedo appears a player reborn since Enzo Maresca’s arrival and produced arguably his finest performance yet in a Chelsea shirt as the west London giants ran out 3-0 victors over West Ham at the weekend.
Had it not been for Nicolas Jackson’s exceptional display, in which the striker scored twice and assisted Cole Palmer, Caicedo would likely have came away from the London Stadium with the man-of-the-match award.
Chelsea will look to make it three wins from three when they face Brighton this weekend and Maresca may be tempted to rest Caicedo for Tuesday’s Carabao Cup clash with Barrow after the Ecuadorian’s all-action display.
‘He was everywhere,’ former Chelsea midfielder Obi Mikel said on The Obi One Podcast.
‘He didn’t start his Chelsea career really well. A few games into his Chelsea career there was lots of mistakes and everyone was thinking, “Why did we pay so much money for this guy?”.
‘Now we can see those performances that he was putting in at Brighton. He’s an absolutely fantastic player, he was everywhere on Saturday. Not just breaking up play, trying to link up play as well, passing, everything.
‘Now you feel that this is the Moises Caicedo that we all know and when you watch him you can see there is a bit of confidence there, “Now I play for Chelsea Football Club, this is my team”.
‘With the performances and the way he behaves on the pitch, there is no ego. He’s absolutely fantastic, he was everywhere. It was a bit like an N’Golo Kante performance.
‘Credit to Moises and also to the manager for giving him such confidence and making sure that he believes in him. It’s paying off with the performances.
‘This is a guy that I think will eventually go on to maybe, probably, captain the club.’
Obi Mikel is optimistic about Chelsea’s future with Maresca at the helm and is convinced the Italian is ‘building something’ positive.
‘He’s building something, we can see that right now. The system, the way he wants the team to play, his philosophy, everything is coming through,’ he added.
‘It takes a bit of time but everything is coming through and it’s refreshing to see that we can go toe to toe with these big teams.
‘I know West Ham are not [a big team] but if we can go toe to toe with the big teams and not get swept aside, that is absolutely fantastic.’
The ex-Nigeria international believes Maresca is doing a ‘fantastic job’ and has supporters excited again.
‘The team we have right now and not just the starting XI, the guys we have coming from the bench, there is a lot of quality,’ Obi Mikel continued.
‘With the players that are coming off the bench, it’s not like the quality is going to go down. It improves the team. That’s exactly what we wanted, we wanted players to come into the team and improve the team and we can see that.
‘Maresca is doing an absolutely fantastic job. The way we’re playing, the way we’re keeping possession of the ball, with the ball, off the ball, everything is clicking.
‘It’s so amazing to watch the team right now, it’s so refreshing as a Chelsea fan when you sit down and watch us play right now.’
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