Chelsea stunned as Cucurella eviscerates BlueCo, manager decisions, transfer strategy and more | OneFootball

Marc Cucurella has ripped Chelsea’s project under BlueCo to shreds, questioning their transfer strategy and managerial decisions among other issues, as well as declaring Enzo Maresca should have stayed.

International breaks often provide a chance for disgruntled players to speak out and in most cases, it’s in a negative manner.

Rodri has talked up an exit from Manchester City with a transfer to Real Madrid now advancing. It’s even worse news at Stamford Bridge, with Enzo Fernandez’s come-and-get-me plea to Real Madrid now trumped by Cucurella’s interview with The Athletic.

The interview was conducted prior to Spain’s 3-0 friendly victory over Serbia last Friday before being published on Tuesday.

As one of Chelsea’s most senior players aged 27 and being one of the Blues’ first signings in the BlueCo era, he’s more than qualified to give his take on how Chelsea’s project is faring.

But unfortunately for Chelsea, Cucurella’s opinion is there are too many wrong decisions being made and the club’s ambitions of winning the biggest honours are being negatively impacted as a result.

Firstly, when speaking on Chelsea’s 8-2 aggregate thumping at the hands of PSG in the Champions League, the left-back said: “I understand this is part of the club’s policy, and that they want to take this direction — signing young players and looking to the future. But, for all of us who are still here and want to win big things, moments like this make you feel discouraged.

“We have a good core of players. The foundations are there. But to fight for major trophies such as the Premier League or the Champions League, you need more. Signing young players only might complicate achieving those goals. Against PSG, we lacked players that had gone through situations like that.

“You need time as well, and I know the young players are the ones that will have the experience in the future. But you need to find the balance between both worlds.”

Chelsea parted ways with the highly-rated Enzo Maresca at the turn of the year, with the Italian leaving by mutual consent.

Cucurella insisted Chelsea should not have made a mid-season managerial change, with the players now struggling to adapt to Liam Rosenior’s tactical instructions while the fixture list is so dense and time on the training pitch is sparse.

Furthermore, Cucurella declared he’d have died for Maresca, such was his belief the Italian was the right man for the post.

He continued: “Liam is a very good person and has been great at handling the group, the characters. He likes to stay close to us and his football ideas are good, but we don’t have the time to train them.

“We train on (playing in) competitive games, because we play every three days and that leaves you with no time to work on the training ground. In this context, it is normal that your plans sometimes don’t work out, and then we go through difficult moments.

“With Enzo Maresca in charge, we were more stable, because we worked together for 18 months. If you look at our first pre-season with him (Chelsea won only once in six warm-up friendlies, losing three), there were doubts.

“You need a process for every player to understand what we need to do. In our last months with Maresca, we played almost by heart. If we changed the system, we knew what we had to do. You need that time.

“Look at Arsenal now, who are fighting for every trophy. They’ve been with (Mikel) Arteta for almost seven years and they have not won much. But that trust in the project gives rewards.”

He added: “We knew what Maresca wanted from us. Winning a title like the Club World Cup (beating PSG 3-0 in the final) also helps, strengthens the bond, and you create great relationships during the celebrations. When a manager gives you that confidence and offers you a platform to fight for titles, you’d die for him.

“The moment Maresca left, it had a big impact on us. These are decisions taken by the club. If you asked me, I would not have made this decision.

“To make a change like that, the best thing is to wait until the end of the season. You would give everyone, the players and the new manager, time to get ready, have a full pre-season…

“The instability around the club comes from this, in a nutshell. We had a caretaker (former under-21s coach Calum McFarlane) first, then a new manager, with new ideas and no time to work on them. It is what it is.”