Davide Astori death: Chelsea wing back Marcos Alonso pays tribute to former Fiorentina team-mate

Alonso played with Astori at Fiorentina during the 2015-16 season before moving to Chelsea

(Getty)

Chelsea wing back Marcos Alonso has paid tribute to the late Davide Astori following his former team-mate’s tragic death.

Fiorentina captain and Italy international Astori died at the age of 31 on Sunday morning following a “sudden illness”.

Police found Astori’s body in the hotel where he was staying with his club team-mates ahead of their Serie A match away at Udinese.

The match and all other Serie A fixtures due to be played on Sunday were postponed as a mark of respect to Astori, who is survived by a long-term partner and two-year-old daughter.

Alonso played alongside Astori at Fiorentina during the 2015-16 season, a year prior to his move to Stamford Bridge.

Speaking after Chelsea’s 1-0 defeat to league leaders Manchester City at the Etihad on Sunday, Alonso hailed his former team-mate’s character.

“The truth is I still can’t believe what has happened. But all I can do is give all my support to the family and to Fiorentina,” he said. “He was an outstanding guy, and a very healthy guy, so I still can’t believe that this has happened.”

Italian prosecutors have opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding Astori’s death, which is believed to have been caused by a cardiac arrest. An autopsy will be carried out on Astori’s body on Tuesday before his funeral is held in Florence on Thursday.

Astori won 14 international caps during his career, four of which came under Antonio Conte during his time in charge of the Italian national team.

The Chelsea manager described Astori as a “fantastic guy” on Sunday, but Alonso said that Conte had not given him the option of sitting out of the trip to City.

“It’s been a difficult day today, I am very sad for what has happened but when you are on the pitch you just have to try not to think about things away from the pitch,” the 27-year-old said, adding: “The truth is there are no excuses for today’s defeat.”

Alonso played with Astori at Fiorentina (Getty)

Bernardo Silva’s strike at the start of the second half consigned Chelsea to their fourth defeat in five league games and left them five points off the pace in the race for a top-four spot.

Alonso suggested that Chelsea’s current malaise is due to an “attitude” problem, though he believes the defending Premier League champions are more than capable of turning their fortunes around.

“I think that is difficult but the team has the conditions and quality to play much better and we have to change the attitude, right? And improve quickly because we have other very important matches coming up and we have to get in the top four.

“I don’t think we have a problem with quality, we have shown in many matches this season that we can be competitive against any team, like we were against Barcelona a couple of weeks ago and if we don’t reach that kind of level of performance in every match it’s because of our attitude.”