“Rejected by Luis Enrique… Flick wouldn’t go near them” – Chelsea have built a project top managers won’t touch | OneFootball

Chelsea were the subject of the debate on Sky Sports this week, with the Blues getting the dreaded “How to Fix Team X” treatment.

The pundits tried to be positive, and noted Chelsea influencer Matisse Broderick even said he continued to back Enzo Maresca despite the season starting to fall apart. His logic is more that there’s nobody out there who provides an instant upgrade on the Italian coach, mainly because Chelsea just aren’t a tempting proposition for a top coach right now:

“If you’re sacking Maresca, you must be bringing in a significant upgrade. Someone who is going to come into that dressing room, command respect immediately, and put his authority on that team. That’s not currently what Chelsea are attracting,” Matisse said.

He cited Diego Simeone and Simone Inzaghi as examples of “serial winners” and the sort of coaches that the Chelsea of ten years ago would have been targeting.

“I don’t want to manage that group of players that you’ve assembled,” he imagined some of these top coaches saying.

“I don’t want to come into a team that’s got financial limitations because of the money that’s been spent, and the issues with dealing with UEFA…. they were rejected by Julien Nagelsmann. They were rejected by Luis Enrique. Hansi Flick wouldn’t go anywhere near them. The level of manager you’re looking at to replace Maresca isn’t out there anymore.

You can see them discuss this fact in the clip embedded here:

Questions over whether Chelsea owners even wanted a big name coach

Hansi Flick on the touchline.

We will never know how serious Chelsea were about appointing some of those big names – ultimately it looked like they got rid of Mauricio Pochettino a year ago because the ownership wanted a coach they could control more directly. None of those big names listed above would have fit the bill on that account.