Enzo Maresca has told his exiled Chelsea players, Raheem Sterling and Axel Disasi, that they should try working through the night as a fisherman – like his father – if they want to understand real hardship.
Sterling and Disasi have been cast into a two-man bomb squad by the club after failing to secure transfers away over the summer. They have been told they cannot use the first-team facilities, which has meant training on a different pitch, changing in a different dressing room and eating in a different area.
Sterling revealed in an Instagram post at the start of the week that he was training at 8pm, which is plainly not ideal for a father of four young children and led to an intervention from the Professional Footballers’ Association. The organisation has worked with Chelsea to try to arrange a more amenable schedule for Sterling and Disasi, which has featured lunchtime sessions with the under-21s.
Maresca, who said he knew from his playing days what it was like to be out of favour at a club, did not appear to have much sympathy. “My father is 75 years old and for 50 years he has been a fisherman, working from two o’clock in the morning to 10 o’clock in the morning,” Maresca said. “This is sad in life – not a player and the way that they work.
“I’ve been in Raheem’s situation and Axel’s situation as a player and for sure I know that it’s not the best feeling for a player because you want to train and play and then, for a different reason, the situation is the situation. I know that the club is giving them the opportunity to work in the right way and this is the only thing I can say.
“It’s not just Chelsea, it’s any club in the world, I can promise you. Italy, Spain, England, France, USA, Brazil, any club in the world … when, for any reason, the player and the club doesn’t find any solution and you give the player all the tools to do training sessions and do everything. But if you are not involved in the squad, you are not involved in the squad.”
Sterling signed for £50m from Manchester City in 2022 and has two years to run on his £325,000-a-week deal. Disasi joined for £38.7m from Monaco in 2023 and is contracted to 2029. It is unclear what he earns.
Sterling, who struggled on loan at Arsenal last season, was the subject of interest from various clubs over the summer, including loans from Napoli, Bayer Leverkusen and Bayern Munich. But if they seemed like good options for Chelsea, they were not so for Sterling, who did not favour a loan to an overseas club. MunichBayern’s move also came very late on deadline day – too late for Sterling to make a composed decision.
Sterling’s priority was a permanent transfer and he made clear that a switch to Fulham would have been his preference only for the clubs to fail to agree terms. It is understood that his salary was not an obstacle. Disasi wanted to get a move back to France.
