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Brighton & Hove Albion head coach Fabian Hurzeler wants to make Carlos Baleba more resilient so that the influential midfielder can cope with a high volume of matches. The 21-year-old Cameroon international has featured in 25 of Brighton’s 30 games across all competitions so far this season, including 23 starts. Advertisement Baleba will be a key figure in fixtures away to the Premier League’s bottom side Southampton today, at home to Bournemouth on Tuesday and at Newcastle five days later in the FA Cup fifth round, as the race to qualify for Europe on two fronts reaches a crucial stage for Hurzeler’s tenth-placed side.
“We want to have this amount of games in the future,” Hurzeler told The Athletic . “That is the expectation of the club. So, we have to get players on the pitch that have this resilience, that are able to play three games in a row, but that is a big step in the development especially of young players.
“Take for example, Carlos Baleba. It’s his first season where he plays game by game and really has to perform every week. That is a big, big change for a young player, not only physically but also mentally, to always be ready to give the best you have inside of your body.
” GO DEEPER Baleba is highly-rated - Brighton's strength in depth means they can plan for an exit Hurzeler, speaking at his pre-Southampton press conference on Friday, added: “We have a lot of young players who are at this stage. Not only Carlos, also if you take the No 6’s, with Yasin Ayari (aged 21), Jack Hinshelwood (19), Diego Gomez (21). These are all very young players in the early stages of their careers, so it’s about us building with them this mental and physical resilience so that they can go and play three games in one week.
“That is something we have to work on in training. It’s a journey, it’s a process. It doesn’t come overnight, it’s the same with consistency.
It’s a thing we have to work on to get the resilience into the players.” Brighton qualified for Europe for the first time under former head coach Roberto De Zerbi in 2022-23, finishing sixth and going on to reach the last 16 of the Europa League last season. As many as eight English clubs could qualify to play in Europe in 2025-26, depending on the number of places achieved for the Champions League and which teams win the domestic Cups.
Winning the FA Cup guarantees Europa League football. GO DEEPER Carlos Baleba is more than following in Moises Caicedo's footsteps at Brighton (Richard Sellers/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images).
