ZeeboiStruggling Leicester City face a daunting challenge on Sunday (2pm kick-off) as they take on the manager who guided them back to the Premier League last season.
Enzo Maresca, now the no-nonsense Chelsea boss, was at the helm of the Foxes when they dominated the Championship to secure promotion at the first attempt following their relegation at the end of the 2022/23 campaign.
Since his summer move to Stamford Bridge, Maresca and Leicester have followed very different paths. Chelsea are competing near the top of the Premier League table, while the Foxes have faltered under Steve Cooper and now Ruud van Nistelrooy.
In fact, Maresca’s impressive work at Leicester seems likely to be undone by May, with the club increasingly destined for a swift return to the second tier.
Leicester head to Stamford Bridge on Sunday hoping for an unlikely victory to defy early predictions of their relegation, but sitting 19th and five points from safety, the task looks formidable for van Nistelrooy and his team.
However, they can draw some encouragement from their last win, which came four defeats ago, in London against Tottenham.
Here’s what Maresca had to say in his press conference, via our sister website Football.London, about his former club, Leicester’s current manager, and some of the players he once managed at the King Power…
You’re coming up against your good friend Ruud van Nistelrooy on Sunday. How does that feel?
“Ruud is a friend of mine. We played together and then after we have been in contact. When Leicester called, he thought to call me and we had a chat. I said to him that Leicester is a fantastic club run by fantastic people. I have said many times, I’m 30 years in football and it was probably the best people in football that I’d met. So I told him many good, positive things about Leicester.”
Sad about Leicester’s form this season?
“In this moment, I’m focused on us. Now I’m here, I’m just thinking about us, how we can improve and then it’s more for Ruud, for the sporting director, for the owner to find a solution.”
Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall will come up against his former club. What have you made of his time at Chelsea?
“At the beginning he struggled a little to accept that he was not playing many games. Now, probably after a while, he has realised that he has to be calm, he has to understand. At this moment he’s much better. He played an important game tonight from the start. That shows that I really trust Kiernan. Kiernan knows that Cole [Palmer] played there, Enzo [Fernandez] played there, Christo [Nkunku] played there. So we have many, many players in terms of quality in playing in that
Some of your Leicester players came here to Denmark and they were pictured with a sign that said, “Enzo I miss you”. Did you see the sign?
“No, the only thing I can say is that I try to create a relationship with players where at the end, I feel very close to them and they probably feel very close to me. This is probably the only reason. I still speak with many of Leicester’s players because we had a fantastic season last year and I’m very close to some of them.
“I’ve been in football for more than 30 years. You struggle to find people so, so, so nice, that they care about the family, about the kids, about everything. They are fantastic. But the most important thing, let me say, is that we need our fans on Sunday – 95 minutes, 100 minutes, we need to win the game. That is the most important thing.”
Zeeboi
