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Hello! Chelsea have chosen their coach. Get out your chessboards.
Next:
?? Maresca approaches the draws at Chelsea
? Which coach is compatible with Manchester United?
? Bellingham beats Vinicius Júnior
? The victim of Chelsea’s racist scandal speaks out
How long is a long era of time?
Yesterday, Athletic FC plunged headfirst into the Premier League’s managerial mosh pit. At the time, most discussions about the ins and outs were speculative.
Then, within hours, Chelsea rushed to appoint Enzo Maresca and Kieran McKenna pulled out of the market as he prepared to finalise a new contract with Ipswich Town.
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We will start with the Chelsea. Su offer to Maresca is progressing quickly and everything is going well, the process of replacing Mauricio Pochettino, who left Stamford Bridge seven days ago, will be concluded.
Leicester City, Maresca’s current club, have allowed Chelsea to speak with him. David Ornstein, from Athletic, expects him to sign a long-term contract this week, which will span at least years.
Chelsea are investing in a coach who just won the English championship with Leicester. He is also going after a player with an incredibly short record, another teammate of Pep Guardiola.
A former assistant to Guardiola, Mikel Arteta, runs the exhibition at Arsenal. Soon, a moment will patrol the Stamford Bridge sideline.
Will Pep’s shot have the same effect?
As a player, Maresca is a midfielder who travelled a lot and won Serie A with Juventus. But what is most discussed is his training career.
Apart from a brief and not very satisfied spell at Italian Parma, he has a full season as head coach: last year at Leicester. There’s no denying that everything went well: they crowned the league with 97 points.
So, on paper, everything is fine. But his popularity is unanimous. Maresca likes his team to play with incredible patience from the back, and a part of the Leicester crowd longed for faster and more direct football.
Managers who speak are fashionable. In January, after loud murmurs in the stands, Maresca warned that “as soon as there are doubts about (my) idea, the next day I will leave”.
When Maresca arrived at Leicester from Manchester City last year, I spoke to Robert Snodgrass, a winger who knows Maresca’s characteristics (it turns out that the Italian is encouraged through chess):
Time will tell. And Chelsea being Chelsea, it will be quickly said.
McKenna also made that impression on Chelsea’s radar, before he was informed at the weekend that he was no longer in contention.
Jobs in Brighton
Perhaps McKenna owes that loyalty to his current club. Or perhaps with the disappearance of the Chelsea project and the madness of the market attracting attention, it turns out that it is time to jump on a whim.
If Maresca to Chelsea is a slightly far-fetched choice, it reflects the difficulty of finding a coach who is a better fit for a club.
This investigation of Manchester United’s characteristics through Mark Carey, Liam Tharme and Thom Harris sums up the challenge.
They analysed the numbers of Pochettino, Thomas Tuchel, Gareth Southgate, Graham Potter, Roberto De Zerbi, Thomas Frank and Michel, to update Erik ten Hag, assuming he leaves.
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There are some wonderful ideas here (including the graph above, which shows that the team is at an all-time low), but I must confess that I came to the conclusion that none of them are foolproof or one hundred percent consistent with one hundred percent. Suitable for this side of Old Trafford.
This increases the chances of Ten Hag staying.
pic. twitter. com/UOJaxFNVoe
– LALIGA English (@LaLigaEN) May 4, 2024
My vote for the Ballon d’Or (although I have one) is for Jude Bellingham. Have Real Madrid fans had a better first year?
We learned a lot about his technical elegance at the Bernabeu, but what struck me about this report on Bellingham, ahead of Saturday’s Champions League final against Borussia Dortmund, is the commotion he lives with: Adidas employees go crazy for him, police ask for selfies. , shirts with his name sell for 10 times more than Vinicius Junior’s, a crazy statistic.
All in all, nothing is more important to Bellingham than his temperament, the composure that allows him to swing in one of football’s crucibles.
It’s to justify Madrid’s failure at Wembley, which is a bit embarrassing because that fairy tale would be a night of glory for Dortmund coach Edin Terzic, “the passionate kid on the block”. It is a lot to ask.
Readers of this newsletter will be familiar with the politics of former Chelsea manager Gwyn Williams, who was secretly banned for life by the Football Association over allegations of bullying and racism within the club.
One of the players who fell victim to this scandal (for which Chelsea has reached several out-of-court monetary settlements) bravely waived his right to anonymity to speak to The Athletic about his trauma. His call is Jimmy Aggrey.
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The main points of Aggrey’s remedy are embarrassing, and it is worth warning that much of the content of the interview makes for a deeply unpleasant read.
We can’t repeat parts of this here, but we get an idea when Aggrey remembers being asked things like, “Can you run like Linford Christie (the black British sprinter)?Do you borrow from the grandmothers in your domain? Do you keep fit?”Circulate drugs in the towers?
This is a vital journalistic detail of Daniel Taylor. And Aggrey’s voice deserves to be heard.
? The penny is falling now. If you have a smart coach, the most productive thing to do is to locate him and, with that in mind, Aston Villa have reached a five-year deal with Unai Emery. And rightly so.
?? Here is a very clever legal explanation of the crimes of which Lucas Paqueta of West Ham United is accused. There’s a lot at stake for him, potentially his career.
? Athletic’s Sam Lee has selected the master of all trades, Rodri, as Manchester City’s Player of the Year. It is ridiculous that the midfielder is not shortlisted for the Premier League POTY Trophy.
(Top photo: Nick Potts/PA Images Getty Images)