The Evening Standard have just put out a very positive piece focusing on the arrival of Enzo Maresca and how chuffed the players are about the prospect of working with the former Pep Guardiola assistant:
“They want to move forward with a head coach who is eager to get into the granular work of coaching on the training pitches — and Maresca fits that bill,” the piece claims.
“The players are said to be excited about the scope for the clear, focused direction that having a tracksuit coach as a figurehead can bring.”
We’re not entirely sure what that says about Mauricio Pochettino – wasn’t he working in a clear, focused direction? Wasn’t he wearing enough tracksuits and getting involved in training enough? He’s certainly a coach we associate with rolling his sleeves and getting involved on the training pitch. But that’s not the impression we get here.
Maresca to get up close and personal
If there’s one thing that Pochettino is known for, it’s his ability to connect with players. He really did that at Chelsea despite some periods of bad results, and we think it’s going to take more than a week for at least some of these players to feel entirely comfortable with his ruthless removal.
This whole piece stinks of a brief from the club, trying to get a positive message out there as soon as possible after a fairly controversial sacking of a coach who seemed to be finding their feet.
This doesn’t mean it’s not true that the players are excited to work with Maresca of course, just that we’re only really getting one side of the story here.
Now the focus needs to turn to actually getting the Leicester boss signed up and working. There’s a lot to do in the next month alone, and we need to get our new tracksuit coach into his tracksuit.