Enzo Maresca forgot Chelsea’s golden rule: the manager does not call the shots | Jacob Steinberg

Key Highlights

• They knew that Enzo Maresca was attempting to engineer an exit from the club and now they were ready to call his bluff.
• Midnight was approaching and the fireworks at Stamford Bridge were about to erupt. A baffling story soon had a familiar, predictable ending.
• Maresca, who is not the first manager to run out of friends at Chelsea, had taken the provocations too far.
• There was surprise when he told staff that he did not want to conduct his post-match press conference after the disappointing 2-2 draw with Bournemouth on Tuesday night.
• The official explanation was that Maresca was too unwell to talk in public, despite having just spent the evening coaching on the Stamford Bridge touchline, but the friction was palpable and it was never going to sit well with the Chelsea hierarchy when it took less than 24 hours for reports to emerge that the sickness line was a red herring and their head coach had actually decided not to meet the media because he needed time to consider his options.