Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca has laughed off criticism from Wayne Rooney after the Manchester United legend challenged the Italian over his squad rotation.
A much-changed side were held to a 2–2 draw with Qarabağ in the Champions League midweek, leading Rooney to take aim at Maresca’s policy of rotating his players— he pointed to a handful of underwhelming results in a surprisingly harsh criticism of the Blues boss.
“The players want to play, they want to build relationships,” he said on The Wayne Rooney Show. “When you keep chopping and changing then the players won’t be happy. I think that will come back to bite them.
“If they are getting results all the time then you can’t question it but if they’re not, there has to be questions asked.
“I think most clubs now have a leadership group and as a group you have to go and question the manager. You hear people talk about ‘player power’ but this isn’t player power. “I’d be concerned if the team kept changing. If i was in that [leadership] group I’d be speaking to my teammates saying, ‘Look, I’m not happy with this.’”
Ahead of Saturday’s meeting with the Premier League’s bottom club, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Maresca was given the chance to respond to Rooney’s criticism—and the Blues boss made it clear he was not giving the issue much thought.
“I said already many times, we are in a moment, in an era where anyone can say what they want,” Maresca responded. “It’s correct, I completely respect, but I also said after the Qarabağ game that since I joined the club, it’s also my view to rotate players, and no-one complained in the moment that you don’t win a game. I can understand that no-one disagreed.
“I think that when the rotation is Andrey Santos, Brazil international player, Jorrel Hato, Holland international player, Estêvão Willian, Brazil international player, it’s not about rotation. They are good, they are talented, they are young, and for sure when they are young, you have to give them the chance to make some mistakes, to be better. The same thing I think happened in the past with Josh Acheampong.
“But again, I understand that when you don’t win a game, the problem is the rotation or defending.”
Aside from the disappointing result, the midweek draw to Qarabağ could have larger ramifications as it saw midfielder Roméo Lavia pull up with a muscle injury inside the opening minutes, bringing an abrupt end to what was just his 30th appearance since his move to Chelsea in the summer of 2023.
The Belgian has already missed a total of 77 games for the Blues because of no fewer than nine previous injuries, and Maresca was unsure how long Lavia will need to recover from his tenth setback.
“We don’t have an update at the moment, so we need to wait still some hours to do all the checks that he needs, but for sure at the moment he’s injured,” he said.
“It’s a shame. It’s a shame in this moment also because we are trying to minimise menus for him. But even with that, he’s injured again. We need to insist until we find the right solution for him.”
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