Chelsea’s Kanté facing several weeks out

Chelsea midfielder N’Golo Kanté will be out for a few weeks due to a hamstring injury sustained during the clash with Tottenham Hotspur last weekend, manager Thomas Tüchel said on Friday.

Kanté went to ground with the problem in the 2-2 draw with Spurs before being replaced and Tüchel was not optimistic about the French World Cup-winner’s availability in the coming days. “We’re talking about weeks, which is not good news. We’re disappointed and sad because N’Golo was super fit,” Tüchel said ahead of Sunday’s clash at Leeds United.

Tüchel added that striker Armando Broja and midfielder Mateo Kovacic would also miss the Leeds game with injury. Chelsea completed the signing of Italian midfielder Cesare Casadei from Inter Milan on a six-year deal earlier on Friday, with British media saying they paid an initial 12.6 million pounds ($14.91 million) for the 19-year-old. They have been linked with moves for Leicester City defender Wesley Fofana and Barcelona pair Frenkie de Jong and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. “As long as the transfer window is open, there are always possibilities. The focus is on what we have, not what we could have,” Tüchel said, before addressing potential departures before the window shuts on 1 September. “We’ll not comment on our players and we will not encourage our players to go out at the moment,” he said. “We had a couple of training sessions with 18 players, with one game a week this isn’t a problem... but if you look what is coming, we’ll need a lot of quality players to be competitive”.