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- The 23-year-old was spotted disembarking from his club’s plane with the mask
- Team-mate Enzo Fernandez had wondered if the midfielder was ‘joking’
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Cole Palmer has revealed the reason why he wears a face mask while travelling, after being spotted landing with his Chelsea side ahead of the Club World Cup wearing the disposable covering.
Palmer jetted to the United States fresh from international duty with England to the club’s initial training base in Philadelphia.
From there, the squad moved to Atlanta ahead of their first match of the campaign against Los Angeles FC.
The Blues won the clash 2-0 in front of a predominantly empty Mercedes-Benz Arena, with just 22,000 fans in the 75,000 capacity venue.
But ahead of the tie, Palmer found himself scrutinised over his somewhat unusual travel set-up rather than his form, with reporters keen to learn if the star was suffering health-wise.
When asked why he had been wearing a mask en route to America, Palmer revealed that he hadn’t been sporting it due to illness, or for a laugh.
‘It weren’t a joke, I just don’t like the smell of planes,’ Palmer said. ‘So that’s why I wear a mask.
‘When I travel, I feel like the smells and that, I just don’t like them.
‘Stuff like (the air-conditioning), so that’s why I wear masks, not anything else.’
Palmer added that he ‘hadn’t told’ his team-mate Enzo Fernandez, who had suggested it might be for a joke when queried on the attire previously.
The 23-year-old distinguished himself against MLS opposition on Monday night, but his head coach Enzo Maresca revealed after the clash that he is keen to keep pushing his star player after he had shared that he was ‘sick’ of style of play in the team’s victorious UEFA Conference League final.
‘I had a short conversation with Cole and I said to him that I really like the way he was today,’ Maresca told reporters. ‘He took responsibility, showed initiative on the ball.
‘He was trying to receive the ball, go one-v-one against players, and this is the Cole we expect.
‘After the Conference League final, he said he was bored when receiving the ball, so he decided to do something different.
‘The day after that interview, I said to him that he could do it from the first minute and why did he wait so long? Why not do the same after one minute?
‘Today he was exactly doing that, and we are happy when he does that. I’ve said many times Cole is our best player, a top player, and hopefully he can continue to do the right things.’
Maresca will hope that his new No10 shows similar initiative in the side’s second group-stage clash on Friday evening.
The west London outfit are set to play Brazilian giants Flamengo at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia in the second of three round-robin ties.
