Enzo Maresca’s first two weeks of pre-season as Chelsea manager appear to be going well.
After being completely silent on the club’s social media for about a month, he has now been posting a ton of coaching
content and Kieran Gill of the Daily Mail reports that the club already likes their new manager.
“Enzo Mareschi’s first week of training at Chelsea has been nothing but positive, with the players telling
the squad how much they enjoyed his training,” Gil wrote today. “There is already the feeling that
Maresca’s tactical instructions are much clearer than his predecessor and the most common words uttered by
the 44-year-old Italian this week were ‘well done’ when he saw something he liked.”
Of course, this beautiful atmosphere has been marred by the racism scandal that has erupted in the past 24 hours,
but despite this, today’s training photos show that the smiles continue. Pochettino is known as a manager loved
by his players but does not come from the same intense Guardiola-style coaching lineage as Maresca, and while
the sessions always looked enjoyable, disappointment began to set in after Christmas as there was a clear lack of progress tactically.
This is all very positive and a little backtracking is inevitable. However, some perspective is important.
Let’s not forget that similar words and sentiments were expressed a year ago when Mauricio Pochettino took over as manager:
training was fresh and exciting, the sun was shining, Pochettino was smiling, everything was going well and the friendlies were fantastic.
Nonetheless, a year later, here we are with a new coach, so while we certainly want to hear all of this from a (presumably) neutral source,
we need to consider the context and who is delivering these messages.
