It was a fascinating press conference at Cobham today ahead of Chelsea’s game against Manchester United tomorrow.
While there was the usual smattering of team news and injury updates, the most interesting part when manager Enzo Maresca was asked about the two players in the “bomb squad”, forced to train separately from the main group.
Maresca has sympathy with bomb squad players
Raheem Sterling and Axel Disasi have committed no crime beyond being unwanted by Chelsea, and they are working at a different time to their peers, even eating and changing in different facilities. Understandable, this makes a lot of people uncomfortable – and has got the PFA involved.
Maresca played down the situation, claiming it was common in football and that even he had been through it as a player:
“I’ve been in Raheem’s situation and Axel’s situation as a player and for sure I know that it’s not the best feeling for a player because if you are a player that means that you want to train and play a game,” the coach said.
“The situation is the situation that is in this moment and I know that the club is giving them the opportunity to work in the right way, this is the only thing I can say.”
Outcasts compared to septuagenarian Italian fishermen
But in fact it wasn’t the only the only thing he could say. Pressed further on the matter he insisted that it was a common situation:
“It’s not just Chelsea, it’s any club in the world, I can promise you, Italy, Spain, England, France, USA, Brazil, any club in the world, when for any reason the player and the club doesn’t find any solution and you give the player all the tools to do training sessions and to do everything but if you are not involved in the squad you are not involved in the squad.”
When asked about the mental health aspect, Maresca dropped a real bomb, saying that he had little sympathy for highly paid athletes compared to real world examples:
“My father is 75-years-old and for 50 years he has been a fisherman, working from 2 o’clock in the morning until 10 o’clock in the morning. This is hard in life, not a player, the way they work.”
