Danny Welbeck and Geovany Quenda Make First Chelsea Starts as Xabi Alonso’s Rebuild Continues in Hong Kong

Danny Welbeck and Geovany Quenda made their first starts for Chelsea in a 1-0 defeat to Juventus in Hong Kong, as Xabi Alonso continued rebuilding his squad ahead of the new Premier League season.

Edon Zhegrova settled the pre-season friendly with a curling finish in the 68th minute, latching onto a Kenan Yildiz lay-off before picking out the top corner from the edge of the box. It was the only moment of real quality in a game short on clear chances for either side.

Chelsea lined up with Welbeck and Quenda both handed starts alongside new signing Marco Palestra, who produced the visitors’ best opening when he raced clear of the Juventus defense only to be denied by goalkeeper Michele Di Gregorio. Palestra had also combined with Quenda down the right for a first-half header that Welbeck sent wide.

Alonso: “Little steps forward”

Alonso spoke about the challenge of assessing a squad still coming together three weeks into pre-season, with several key players missing from the Hong Kong trip.

“We have been together for three weeks so it’s early days to talk about everything but we are taking little steps forward and many more that we will take in the future for sure,” Alonso said.

He picked out the opening period as evidence of progress, even in defeat. “I think we started pretty well. The first 30-35 minutes we played with good control, we have created a few chances but in the last few minutes, a little bit like last Saturday, we lost a little bit of control.”

The Spaniard also addressed the demands of a pre-season tour that has taken his squad from Sydney to Hong Kong to Jakarta inside three weeks. “Not the same like training in Cobham with everything under control but so far it’s been a great experience,” he said, adding that he has had to “adapt to the circumstances” of the schedule.

Two new faces, two different paths to Stamford Bridge

Welbeck’s start came days after Chelsea completed his signing from Brighton on a free transfer, a move that brought the 35-year-old to a boyhood club he had never represented in his senior career. He shared the central striking role with Joao Pedro and had Chelsea’s clearest early sight of goal, heading a Quenda cross wide of the far post in the first half.

Quenda’s path to Stamford Bridge took considerably longer. Chelsea agreed the framework of his transfer from Sporting Lisbon in March 2025, more than a year before he actually arrived, with the teenager staying in Lisbon to finish out the season before completing the move this summer on a long-term contract. He was one of Sporting’s most productive attackers before the transfer, and his introduction down the right flank alongside Palestra gave Chelsea their most direct route through Juventus all night.

Palestra, a £43m signing from Atalanta, was named Serie A’s Defender of the Season last year and arrived at Chelsea with his positional versatility in mind, capable of playing at right-back or further forward as a wing-back in Alonso’s favored back-four and back-three systems. His driving run in the second half was the closest either side came to scoring outside of Zhegrova’s winner.

Welbeck’s long road back

Welbeck’s route to Stamford Bridge stretches back to a Manchester United academy he joined at the age of eight. He broke into United’s first team in 2008, won the League Cup and Club World Cup with the club, then moved to Arsenal for £16m in 2014, where he added an FA Cup winner’s medal across five seasons. Injuries disrupted a short spell at Watford before Brighton gave him a route back to regular football in 2020, and he leaves the Amex Stadium as a 35-year-old with 42 England caps and 11 international goals, including his memorable strike against Uruguay at the 2014 World Cup.

Quenda’s path has been shorter but no less notable. The 19-year-old came through Sporting’s academy and won the Portuguese domestic double, the Primeira Liga and Taca de Portugal, before being named the league’s Young Player of the Season. He has also collected 12 caps for Portugal’s U21 side, scoring five goals. Alonso now has to find room for him in an attacking group that already includes Rogers, Palmer, Estevao and Pedro Neto.

Mudryk’s long wait ends

Mykhailo Mudryk came off the bench with just under ten minutes to play, his first appearance in a Chelsea shirt after November 2024, following the resolution of the anti-doping case that kept him out of action for the best part of two years. His introduction could not change the result, but it marked a return to competitive football for a player Chelsea had been unable to select for nearly two seasons.

Palestra’s audition continues

Palestra has now started three of Chelsea’s four pre-season fixtures, and his display against Juventus followed a tactical breakdown Sky Sports published earlier in the window explaining why the Italian’s dribbling and running power make him a fit for Alonso’s system. Chelsea paid Atalanta £43m for the 21-year-old, who signed a seven-year contract and won Serie A’s Defender of the Season award last term while on loan at Cagliari. The forward run that Di Gregorio.denied against Juventus was his clearest individual moment of the tour so far, and it came from exactly the kind of attacking wing-back positioning Alonso wants from the role.

A squad still finding its shape

Chelsea were missing Morgan Rogers, Cole Palmer and Enzo Fernandez from the starting XI in Hong Kong. Palmer sat out with what the club described as a minor injury, while Rogers and Fernandez were left out as Alonso continued rotating his squad across the tour. The absences left a starting line-up short of some of the attacking talent Chelsea have added or retained this summer, and Alonso pointed to those gaps rather than a lack of effort as the reason his side could not turn control of the opening half into goals.

Rogers arrived from Aston Villa for a club-record fee reported at £117m, the single biggest outlay of Chelsea’s summer, and his absence against Juventus removed a player expected to start regularly once fully settled. Fernandez has continued to attract transfer interest from elsewhere in the Premier League, with reports linking him to Manchester City if Rodri leaves the Etihad, though Chelsea have shown no sign of wanting to sell a player Alonso has built his midfield plans around.

The result means Chelsea have now lost back-to-back pre-season fixtures, following a 1-2 defeat to Tottenham in Sydney on August 1 in which Richarlison scored an injury-time winner for a Spurs side reduced to 10 men by a Kevin Danso red card. Those two losses came after Alonso’s bow in charge produced a 6-4 win over Western Sydney Wanderers on July 28, a game in which Joao Pedro scored a hat-trick in a high-scoring opener that gave little indication of the tighter, lower-scoring games that followed.

The gap between that opening result and the two defeats that followed reflects the level of opposition Alonso has selected for his tour. Western Sydney Wanderers play in Australia’s A-League, while Tottenham and Juventus arrived in Asia as full Premier League and Serie A squads building toward their own domestic seasons. Facing sharper opposition earlier in pre-season lets Alonso see more clearly where his squad stands before the opening weeks of the Premier League campaign, regardless of the scorelines against Tottenham and Juventus.

What comes next

Chelsea’s pre-season tour continues with a match against AC Milan in Jakarta, followed two days later by a game against Johor Darul Ta’zim in Malaysia. The squad returns to west London for a home friendly against Real Sociedad at Stamford Bridge on August 15, their final test before the Premier League season begins.

Alonso will use the remaining fixtures to settle on his first-choice line-up, with the back four he fielded against Juventus one option among several formations he has tried across the tour, alongside spells with a back three that gave Palestra and his fellow wing-backs more license to attack. Palestra, Quenda and Welbeck all made a case for regular involvement in Hong Kong, even in a losing effort, and the manager’s task over the next fortnight is turning those individual glimpses of quality into a settled starting XI capable of opening the season with more control than his side showed after the 35-minute mark against Juventus. The Real Sociedad friendly at Stamford Bridge on August 15 gives Alonso one final home audience to run through his preferred group before the games start to count toward the table.

For a squad missing several first-choice players and playing its third match in nine days across three different cities, Alonso’s message after the final whistle stayed consistent with what he has said throughout the tour: he cares less about this month’s results than the habits the squad builds together, and the group is still working toward the version of Chelsea he wants to see once the games start to count.