Pedro Neto said he was surprised by Enzo Maresca\u2019s sudden departure from Chelsea and reiterated his gratitude to the outgoing coach. Neto was among the players who posted a parting message thanking Maresca for \u201call the memories, achievements and trust,\u201d and he expanded on his reaction during a Sky Sports appearance.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the game [against Bournemouth], of course we wanted to win, I think we had a little bit the idea\u2014of course we didn\u2019t have the idea but it was a bit like, we were all upset.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then when I heard the news, to be honest in the beginning I was a little bit surprised, because the manager did very good for us. He did an unbelievable season last year, he was doing a good season this year. Of course, we wanted to do better, we always want to do better.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut this is football. Of course, for me, I\u2019d be a little bit sad because it was the manager that helped me a lot in these years. He helped a lot, I learned a lot with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn personal terms, he was unbelievable as well. The only thing I can say is, \u2018Thank you,\u2019 but it\u2019s football and we have to go through it and go to the next game already thinking about us as a team and try to win it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maresca\u2019s exit was notable because it did not stem from poor results or lost support in the dressing room. After the 2\u20132 draw with Bournemouth, Maresca did not attend his post-match press conference; assistant Willy Caballero cited illness. It later emerged that Maresca had requested to leave the club that evening and did not speak to the squad after the final whistle, instead getting changed and departing the dressing room.<\/p>\n
Sources described growing tensions over transfers, squad rotation and restrictions from the medical staff, matters that ultimately contributed to those deciding Maresca\u2019s future. Strasbourg manager Liam Rosenior is the leading candidate to replace him, while Under-21 coach Calum McFarlane will lead the team into Sunday\u2019s meeting with Manchester City.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pedro Neto says he was surprised by Enzo Maresca’s departure and thanked him for his support. today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5669,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[1305,1087,1032],"class_list":["post-5670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-bench-selection","tag-coaching-change","tag-contract-disputes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5670","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=5670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}