Marc Cucurella confirmed what had been simmering around Stamford Bridge, aligning his comments with earlier speculation about Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez and Real Madrid. While team-mate Mois\u00e9s Caicedo declined to add fuel to talk of exits, the left back allowed that a return to La Liga remains on his mind.<\/p>\n
“At the end of the day, Spain is always Spain,” he said. “It\u2019s my country and where I grew up, and you always think about going back, but I think I\u2019d leave it for a few years.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m very happy [in England], my family too, and as a life experience, it\u2019s a very good one.”<\/p>\n
Pressed on a possible move to Barcelona, where he came through as a youth player, Cucurella did not rule it out.<\/p>\n
“Well, it\u2019s clear that if something like that happens, it\u2019s difficult to turn them down, but I\u2019d have to consider it.<\/p>\n
“At the end of the day, it\u2019s not just about me. I\u2019d also have to think about my family, maybe, what\u2019s best for them or for all of us, but as I said before, I\u2019m not thinking about that right now.<\/p>\n
“If it happens, it happens, and we\u2019ll see what we decide.”<\/p>\n
Later the same day he delivered a frank assessment of the club\u2019s current state, linking unrest in the squad to managerial upheaval. Tensions have been present since the exit of Enzo Maresca in January, a departure the player suggested was disruptive after 18 months of work together. The split followed reported conflict with a sporting hierarchy under pressure since new owners BlueCo arrived in 2022.<\/p>\n
Maresca was succeeded by Liam Rosenior, who faces his own challenges after four straight defeats and a Champions League exit to Paris Saint-Germain, who had been beaten by the Blues in the Club World Cup last summer.<\/p>\n
“Liam is a very good person and has been great at handling the group, the characters,” Cucurella insisted to The Athletic . “He likes to stay close to us and his football ideas are good, but we don\u2019t have the time to train them.”<\/p>\n
Cucurella also defended Maresca and warned that frequent change has consequences: “With Enzo Maresca in charge, we were more stable, because we worked together for 18 months… It is what it is.”<\/p>\n
That instability is compounded by a recruitment strategy favouring younger players and resale value over older experience. With Tosin Adarabioyo the oldest at 28, ahead of Robert S\u00e1nchez and 27-year-old Cucurella, the left back admitted the club\u2019s “win later” approach has a psychological cost. “Results like [the PSG defeat] are always hard to take,” Cucurella said. “You are fighting and training every day only to realize, at the very end, that when games matter, we are still a bit away from the top level.<\/p>\n
“I understand this is part of the club\u2019s policy, and that they want to take this direction\u2014signing 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. ]”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cucurella admits Barcelona interest and questions Chelsea’s direction after Maresca’s exit. publicly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10301,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[1505,1047],"class_list":["post-10302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-accountability","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}