Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca pushed back against criticism of how the club is handling Raheem Sterling and Axel Disasi, drawing on the hardship his fisherman father endured to frame his defence. Both players are understood to be firmly outside Maresca\u2019s plans and have been kept separate from the first-team group.<\/p>\n
The pair continue to train, eat and get changed away from the first team. Earlier this month, Chelsea\u2019s manager openly admitted that he hasn\u2019t set eyes on the pair at all during the new campaign.<\/p>\n
The Professional Footballers\u2019 Association has become involved, with BBC Sport reporting that the union is concerned the players may lack the platform to “train to an optimum level.” The PFA are expected to remind Chelsea of FIFA regulations relating to unfair exclusion and the potential for such treatment to be considered abusive.<\/p>\n
Article 15 in FIFA\u2019s Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players reads: \u201cAn established professional who has, in the course of the season, appeared in fewer than 10% of the official matches in which his club has been involved may terminate his contract prematurely on the ground of sporting just cause.\u201d This drastic action can only be triggered in the first 15 days following the final match of the season.<\/p>\n
When pressed, Maresca struck a conciliatory tone about the personal impact on the players while defending the club\u2019s approach. \u201cI\u2019ve been in Raheem\u2019s situation and Axel\u2019s situation as a player and for sure I know that it\u2019s not the best feeling for a player,\u201d he acknowledged, \u201cbecause if you are a player that means that you want to train and play a game and then for a different reason the situation is the situation that is in this moment and I know that the club is giving them the opportunity to work in the right way. This is the only thing I can say.\u201d<\/p>\n
His tone hardened when the topic was pursued. \u201cI know that it\u2019s something that you [the media] like and you want to talk about but it\u2019s not just Chelsea, it\u2019s any club in the world,\u201d he fumed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can promise you, Italy, Spain, England, France, USA, Brazil, any club in the world, when for any reason the player and the club doesn\u2019t find any solution and you give the player all the tools to do training sessions and to do everything but if you are not involved in the squad you are not involved in the squad.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maresca defended Chelsea\u2019s handling of Raheem Sterling and Axel Disasi after a PFA intervention. Firmly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2898,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[808,1032,986],"class_list":["post-2899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","tag-axel-disasi","tag-contract-disputes","tag-contract-standoff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2899","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=2899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}