Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca has come out to blast the repeated disruptions at the Club World Cup. He recently had his say while speaking to the press, and fans have been reacting.
According to him, such stoppages change the entire rhythm and nature of a football match, and despite Chelsea’s progression vs Benfica, the terrible conditions and lengthy delays left a sour taste.
Maresca added that the conditions has been a joke thus far, and that is far from ideal for the footballers.
His words, “For 85 minutes we were in control of the game. After the break, the game changed completely. For me it’s not football. It’s already seven, eight, nine games that they suspended. I think it’s a joke to be honest, it’s not football. It’s not for us. You cannot be inside. I struggle to understand. I can understand that for security reasons, you suspend the game. But if you suspend seven, eight games, that means that probably [this] is not the right place to do this competition.
The problem is that when the game is suspended, it’s not football. Guys, it’s not football. You suspend the game, it’s not football. It’s completely something different. They [Benfica] scored because they need to chase. We are inside, we are winning. You go outside, mentally different. It’s difficult. We had an hour and a half, two-hour stop. Then it started completely different.
It’s not the same game because you break the tempo. So two hours inside; people speak with the family outside, if they were good, the security. People eating, people laughing, people talking on the mobile. It’s two hours.
That’s why I said it’s not football. It’s something that you struggle to understand. But we tried to go out, continue in the same way, knowing that it was difficult. It’s not random that for 85 minutes, we didn’t concede nothing. And then for five minutes, we conceded a few chances. Why? It’s because it started a completely different game.”
WOW.
Chelsea Football Club is an English professional football club based in Fulham, West London. Founded in 1905, they play their home games at Stamford Bridge.
The club competes in the Premier League, the top division of English football. They won their first major honour, the League championship, in 1955. The club won the FA Cup for the first time in 1970, their first European honour, the Cup Winners’ Cup, in 1971, and became the third English club to win the Club World Cup in 2022.
On 7 May 2022, Chelsea confirmed that terms have been agreed for a new ownership group, led by Todd Boehly, Clearlake Capital, Mark Walter and Hansjörg Wyss, to acquire the club. The group was later known as BlueCo.
The UK government approved the £4.25bn takeover, ending Abramovich’s 19-year ownership of the club. Bruce Buck, who served as chairman since 2003, was replaced by Boehly, while long-serving club director and de facto sporting director Marina Granovskaia left, as did Petr Čech from the role of technical and performance advisor.
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