Enzo Maresca tries to explain his decision to start key players days before Champions League decider | OneFootball

Enzo Maresca tied himself in knots tonight talking about his decisions following Chelsea’s shocking defeat to Legia Warsaw at home.

Asked about the performance, one of his first excuses was that he had had to “rotate” his team. It was immediately put to him that, if anything, the team he put out was surprisingly strong. There was some rotation in defence, but only really for players who have played plenty of A and B team games this season, plus first team left back Marc Cucurella.

The fact that Cole Palmer and Nicolas Jackson also started surprised everyone, so can he really blame a rotated team? When this was put to him, he said “no,” but couldn’t really explain why it was wrong.

“No, the idea was just for them, especially for Nico, Nico has been more than two months out, so the idea to play with him is to continue to build a little bit the physical condition for him, so the idea was for him 45 minutes, we planned already that, and for Cole, he had a small problem before the international break, so again, for him it was to use him 45 minutes, one hour, and then just to give them a little bit tempo and improve that and be better Sunday on the game.”

“Yeah, first of all the main target for them was to help them to build physical condition, so we decided to use both of them, and for sure if they are able to score, it could be a good boost for them.”

Maresca’s limits his options for Fulham clash

Tyrique George runs. (Photo by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

So his grand plan to get players fit and firing for the rest of the season is to play them in the games they don’t need to play in? We’re not sure about that logic. They were both poor, Palmer picked up a kick and Jackson was anonymous.

Both extended their respective goalless streaks. Talk about a backfire.