Chelsea Reporter’s Notebook: Enzo Maresca impresses, but will he have time as high line wreaks havoc? | Football News

Enzo Maresca couldn’t hide a slight smile at the word “patience”.

The Chelsea manager had turned translator and was trying to translate a Spanish question into English before answering.

A journalist asked Maresca what he thought of Carlo Ancelotti’s comments praising his footballing knowledge and principles.

The Real Madrid coach deemed Maresca the perfect candidate for Chelsea’s young squad and implored the club’s owners to give him “patiencia”, or patience.

Ancelotti is ideally placed to comment on someone he has known for 24 years; a relationship that began when Maresca was signed from West Bromwich Albion for Juventus and has continued ever since.

The Chelsea manager responded by saying that there are very few people in football who have a greater understanding of what it takes to succeed than Ancelotti. So if the 65-year-old tells Chelsea to give Maresca time, then they should.

But will they? That was the nagging question as I watched Maresca closely as he sought to re-engineer the West Londoners as a ball-possessing team, ridding them of bad habits.

He is an impressive person: confident, authoritative, willing to put himself in a corner and with a sense of humor.

There is a sense of confidence and calm in him that contrasts with the state the club has found itself in in recent years.

Maresca fits squarely into the category of managers who are not a problem at Stamford Bridge, despite a ruthless pre-season.

Real Madrid were the last to outwit Chelsea, who were destroyed by Celtic, coached by Manchester City and drawn with Wrexham. Their only win on tour came against Club America.

While scores in the early stages of this adaptation period are not important, error management is.

Chelsea need to stop playing a high line with no pressure on the ball. It’s such a glaring weakness that when I spoke to Maresca about it in Charlotte, he admitted he pointed it out in his first meeting with the team.

They lose too many goals because they are too ambitious and too passive.

What they are doing is not out of instruction but out of habit. Maresca wants them a little deeper so Chelsea can have more control.

He also spent the pre-season tour of the United States experimenting to work out the shape and combinations that will give Chelsea balance.

“We’re trying different things: one game we play with the inside right-back, then with the inside left-back, and against Manchester City we played with the left-back higher up,” he explained.

“With the number nine we play with [Marc] Guiu and Christopher [Nkunku]As for the winger we played with [Tyrique] George, the boy from the academy. We are trying different things. For sure, the club and I are together, we know what we need before we close the transfer window.”

Maresca has deployed Mykhailo Mudryk on the right, even though he is better on the opposite flank. Although he sees Nicolas Jackson as a number 9, he would use him as a winger if necessary.

Maresca is, as one source put it, “more of a problem solver than a problem finder,” and he has proven it.

The tour was far from ideal: too many matches, unpleasantly wet weather, pitches unsuitable for elite football, and travel that prevented full match preparation.

For these reasons, Maresca defined the “real pre-season” as the period before and after the United States: the two weeks Chelsea spent in Cobham before flying to the United States and the 10 days they will spend at the training ground before the start of the Premier League.

However, Maresca will find a decidedly overcrowded squad at the base, and when I asked him if he would like to have a smaller squad, it was abundantly clear that there would be a lot of cuts to be made.

Conor Gallagher is expected to soon wear the Atletico Madrid shirt, while Samu Omorodion will go in the opposite direction.

In addition to selling well, Chelsea expect their big signings to deliver consistent results: Mudryk, Nkunku, Romeo Lavia, Moises Caicedo…

The Ecuadorian midfielder, signed for £115million, admitted the pressure of his price tag hampered him last season.

Caicedo lost confidence in himself and his abilities. He only began to feel truly at home at Chelsea in the last four months of his debut campaign, with former manager Mauricio Pochettino and his coaching staff helping him through the turbulent period.

“They were with me when I felt I was no longer the same Moises,” Caicedo said, explaining his request in detail: ‘Please help me because I want to show my qualities, my football.’

“They were with me. I have a person outside the club who helped me a lot to relieve myself of the pressure.”

This was a performance coach who sits down with Caicedo after every game and analyzes his game. “He told me, ‘Moises, you are a good player, you can do whatever you want on the pitch with responsibility. Just trust yourself. If Chelsea paid for you, it’s because you are a very good player.'”

Caicedo is confident he will return to playing at his best under Maresca, who will look to adopt the playing system the midfielder was comfortable with at Brighton.

“The coach wants the same thing from me that I did there,” Caicedo explained. “He wants me to show my qualities, to have a good personality, to show my teammates that I am the boss on the pitch. For sure, I will be a good player with him.”

Will we see the best of Caicedo again? Will Maresca have time to realise his vision? Will we get a broader idea of ​​what modern Chelsea wants to be?

Preseason has offered little indication of the above. It is time for patience.