Fernandez played a vital role in Argentina’s triumph in Qatar and received the FIFA Young Player award for a string of superb showings that will leave Blues fans excited to watch him in Chelsea colours for the first time.

The midfielder is the ninth player to have signed for us as a World Cup winner. Five Blues – Marcel Desailly, Frank Leboeuf, Andre Schurrle, N’Golo Kante and Olivier Giroud – have won the tournament while on our books, plus Peter Bonetti who did not initially receive a medal in 1966. We profiled our previous finalists before Argentina’s epic shoot-out victory against France in December.

Here, though, the focus falls on those who already had a World Cup winners’ medal in their collection when they arrived in SW6, starting nearly 25 years ago with a pair of Frenchmen…

1998 – Deschamps and Petit

Joining Leboeuf and Desailly in France’s victorious side were Didier Deschamps and Emmanuel Petit. Deschamps signed from Juventus a year after captaining Les Bleus to glory on home soil, spending a solitary season at Chelsea before moving on. He has since managed France to back-to-back World Cup finals, the first of which they won in 2018 with Kante and Giroud involved.

Petit was at Arsenal in 1998 and after a season at Barcelona, he signed for Claudio Ranieri’s Blues in the summer of 2001. Although affected by injury in west London, Petit did accrue 76 appearances in all competitions, starting the 2002 FA Cup final and helping us qualify for the Champions League the following year.

2002 – Belletti

Juliano Belletti played five minutes for Brazil at the 2002 World Cup, coming on towards the end of their 1-0 semi-final win over Turkey in Japan. Behind-the-scenes footage he filmed during the tournament was used for a recent documentary chronicling Brazil’s rise to glory that year.

After the World Cup Belletti got a move to Villarreal, and then following three years at Barcelona, in which his only goal was the winner in the 2006 Champions League final against Arsenal, the right-back signed for Chelsea. In three years at the Bridge he made a total of 94 appearances, scored five mostly spectacular goals, and won the Double in his final two appearances for the club.

2006 - Amelia

Certainly the most niche name on this list, Marco Amelia was Italy’s third-choice goalkeeper at the 2006 World Cup behind Gianluca Buffon and Angelo Peruzzi. Then at Livorno, Amelia played nine times for his country between 2005 and 2009, but not at that World Cup.

In October 2015, Chelsea came calling following an injury to Thibaut Courtois. Amelia signed as cover for Asmir Begovic but never played for the Blues.

2010 – Fabregas, Torres, Mata and Pedro

The Spanish quartet of Fernando Torres, Juan Mata, Cesc Fabregas and Pedro would all join Chelsea at various points after helping Spain win the World Cup for the first time.

Torres was the first to arrive, in the January transfer window after Spain’s victory over the Netherlands in Johannesburg. A few months later Juan Mata, who played once in South Africa, signed from Valencia, and that duo would combine to great effect on several occasions, not least in the build-up to our equaliser in the Champions League final in Munich.

They both left west London before Cesc Fabregas, who assisted Andres Iniesta’s World Cup-final winning goal, made such a lasting impression having breezed into the Bridge in the summer of 2014. The following summer Pedro followed Fabregas from Barcelona and both would win the league and the FA Cup together, with Pedro completing his own personal collection of silverware with a goal in our Europa League triumph over Arsenal in Baku.