Enzo Maresca issued his first public comments after leaving Chelsea by mutual consent on the morning of Jan. 1, using his Instagram account to underline the achievements of his 18-month spell.<\/p>\n
He acknowledged a season of fluctuating form \u2014 \u201cthere were highs and lows\u201d \u2014 and the earlier admission that his side were not genuine Premier League title challengers. Despite inconsistency, Chelsea remained in all four competitions and were sitting fifth when his departure was announced.<\/p>\n
The prevailing theory is that a breakdown in relationship between Maresca and the club\u2019s hierarchy proved to be the manager\u2019s downfall, rather than anything to do with results. Still, Maresca framed his exit around the progress he delivered on the field.<\/p>\n
He opened his Instagram post with: “LEAVE THIS WORLD A LITTLE BETTER THAN YOU FOUND IT!” The image that accompanied the message showed the former head coach grinning and wearing a winner\u2019s medal while holding the Club World Cup trophy.<\/p>\n
Maresca repeatedly emphasised that he had inherited a young team which had finished sixth and won no trophies the year before under Mauricio Pochettino. He pointed to tangible gains: leaving Chelsea with two extra pieces of silverware and having the club in line for the Champions League knockout stages.<\/p>\n
His full caption continued: “My journey with Chelsea began with the preliminary rounds of the Conference League,” the caption continued, highlighting his lowly starting point even further. “I leave with the inner peace of leaving a prestigious club like Chelsea where it deserves to be.<\/p>\n
“I want to thank all the Chelsea fans for their support over the last 18 months. Support that was crucial to achieving Champions League qualification, winning the Conference League, and winning the Club World Cup.<\/p>\n
“Victories that I will always hold in my heart!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maresca praised his Chelsea tenure: two trophies, Club World Cup, Conference League, fans’ support. –<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5781,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[1047,1379,1087],"class_list":["post-5782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-champions-league","tag-club-structure","tag-coaching-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5782","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=5782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}