Exclusive | Frank Leboeuf on Enzo Maresca: ‘I think he’s doing some good work at Chelsea without it being excellent.’ | OneFootball

Frank Leboeuf is as mystified as the rest of us! Speaking to Get French Football News about Enzo Maresca’s bizarre outburst following Chelsea’s victory over Everton, the former Blues defender said, “For me, it came out of nowhere. He said he had pressure over 48 hours, but said that it wasn’t the board, it wasn’t the fans. It can’t be me as an ESPN correspondent! I don’t understand it.” 

“I think that he felt under pressure. Which is normal – you’re at Chelsea! You play a great match against Arsenal when down to 10 men (raising questions about Arsenal’s strength) and you follow that up with two defeats and a draw – you bench the players who were performing well – it’s normal that the club asks some questions. Because this is Chelsea. It’s not a small club. It’s the English club that has arguably won the most trophies over the past 20 years. So you need to show some consistency in what you’re doing.” 

Lebouef on Chelsea manager Maresca: ‘Just keep your head down and don’t say anything.’

On Maresca’s time at Chelsea, Leboeuf was cautiously positive, adding his opinion on the issue of players being overplayed: “I think he’s doing some good work without it being excellent. I think that at some point, he needs to be clearer about what he wants to do and how he wants to go about it. Take his rotation policy – OK, fine – but when I was a player, I wanted to play at Cardiff, I played against Oxford, I played at Blackpool. I was happy to play; I didn’t at all mind playing every three days. I don’t understand those who say that the players need to rest – if they’re on form, you play them. I appreciate that it can cause tension in the changing room, but that’s Chelsea’s structure – where maybe they have too many players in the same positions. But that’s his job, and he took it on – so don’t moan and don’t say it was the worst 48 hours of your life. Just keep your head down and don’t say anything. Especially as you’ve just won your match! You’ve beaten Everton – just say ‘The last couple of weeks have been tough, but we’ve worked hard, we’ve beaten Everton, and we take it from there’. Why create issues where there are none?”

Moving on to Chelsea’s “sister” club RC Strasbourg Alsace, also under BlueCo ownership, Leboeuf was reluctant to be too harsh about his former club, despite their rough period of form: “I think it’s a very young team – which has changed a lot since last year. The coach [Liam Rosenior] is also very young. I think there is a lot of quality there – him and his players – but the club has Chelsea and BlueCo behind them, and when we talk about inconsistency, Chelsea is probably the embodiment of that over the last few years. The best players leave Strasbourg, they need to find new players and then recreate the symbiosis with those remaining. It’s tough to do. It’s doable – and what they did at the start of the season is extraordinary – it wasn’t a given considering the players who had left. So Rosenior is doing a great job and should be judged at the end of the season. But it doesn’t surprise me at all that there are ups and downs.”

Leboeuf approves of Strasbourg’s Emegha sanction

Strasbourg’s recent issues have also been put down to an element of player indiscipline, with their captain and forward Emanuel Emegha recently receiving a one-match ban for misplaced comments made in interviews, and Leboeuf has little sympathy for the future Chelsea striker: “I understand the club’s actions. I also said things in the media when I was a player and you forget that you’re part of a business, an infrastructure, and you need to be careful what you say. The club is right to protect the institution and to punish the player. You need to be careful what you say and how you act – it’s a business, not a holiday club!” Leboeuf was particularly critical of Emegha’s comments that he thought Strasbourg was in Germany, saying, “That’s the worst possible insult for the Strasbourgeois. That area [Alsace-Lorraine] kept being flipped between France and Germany – you’re touching on historical sensitivities. So you have to mind what you say.” The French World Cup winner clearly remains very close to the Alsacian club, almost 30 years after leaving the region: “I spent five and a half years at Strasbourg and, along with Chelsea, they were the happiest years of my life because, as a footballer, I experienced amazing emotions with amazing people.”

Frank Leboeuf was speaking to GFFN courtesy of BetVictor Online Casino.

GFFN | Jeremy Smith