Chelsea: Calum McFarlane lifts lid on emergency board meeting after Enzo Maresca departure

In partnership with

Evening Standard

·2 January 2026

Chelsea: Calum McFarlane lifts lid on emergency board meeting after Enzo Maresca departure

Caretaker manager was called away from family day out to take first-team training

Chelsea’s sporting directors, players and caretaker coaching staff held a meeting on Friday morning where the reasons behind Enzo Maresca’s departure were explained and the lead-up to the Manchester City match was mapped out.

Maresca left Chelsea on New Year’s Day after the relationship between the Italian and the Chelsea owners went downhill in the second half of December.

It was on Thursday lunchtime that the Italian’s departure was formally announced, and around the same time, one of Chelsea’s sporting directors rang under-21 head coach Calum McFarlane to ask him to take charge of the team’s away match against Manchester City on Sunday.

OneFootball Videos

McFarlane was en route to a New Year’s Day family trip at a Windsor light show when he was asked how quickly he could get into the club’s Cobham training ground that afternoon and begin gathering a temporary coaching staff and preparing for the City match.

Set-piece coach Bernardo Cueva has stayed on at Chelsea, and McFarlane has brought his assistant coaches Andy Ross and James Simmonds with him for the trip to the Etihad, as well as analyst Adam Keep.

“We had a meeting [Friday] morning with the sporting directors and the players just to explain the situation and introduce the staff and how the next couple of days might look and feel,” McFarlane revealed.

“[It was] really informal, nothing major, just an update which most of them would have been aware of already. But just to formalise it in that moment.”

In the thick of it: Calum McFarlane took first-team training on Friday

Chelsea FC via Getty Images

McFarlane has given further detail about how he came to be asked to lead Chelsea into Sunday’s contest against Pep Guardiola’s City.

“I was actually on the way to a Windsor light show with my family,” he said. “So I got a call [from one of the sporting directors], which just basically said, ‘When can you get in?’

“I said I can be in in an hour. So the missus wasn't very happy about that. But I shot across and they basically explained what happened and said, ‘You're going to be preparing to play Manchester City on Sunday, we fully support you and trust you and good luck.”

McFarlane, who joined Chelsea in the summer from Southampton, was joined at the training ground on Thursday by all members of his under-21s coaching staff who had also been asked in at late notice.

“Once they had explained the situation and we had figured out what the staff team had looked like and what I’d like it to look like, we made calls around,” McFarlane explained.

“Everyone came in at short notice to get ready for what is a massive game on Sunday.”