Enzo Maresca fears the plastic pitch in Stockholm on Thursday night could curtail Chelsea’s Champions League push as he admitted his concern over it causing injuries to his stars.
Cole Palmer and Co face a colossal Premier League clash with Liverpool this Sunday – a match in which they will give the new champions a guard of honour at Stamford Bridge before bidding to boost their chances of a top-five finish by beating them.
But they will first need to navigate their way through Thursday’s Conference League semi-final first leg with Djurgarden, who use an artificial turf at the multi-purpose 3Arena in the Swedish capital.
Maresca has watched six full matches involving Djurgarden in his analytical research and confessed he had also noticed how their players have criticised the state of their own pitch, one of them reported as describing it as ‘s****y’.
Mail Sport asked Maresca on Wednesday night how much of a difference it makes playing on a plastic pitch versus a real one and Chelsea’s head coach responded: ‘It’s completely different.
‘I know that in the last weeks even some of their players were complaining about the pitch. They play every week, so for us, it’s a different one.’
Chelsea are set to play on a plastic pitch when they face Djurgarden on Thursday night
Enzo Maresca is concerned that his Chelsea stars could pick up injuries due to the pitch
Cole Palmer and Co will be hoping they get through the game unscathed, with Chelsea still bidding to secure a top-five finish in the Premier League
On whether it could cause injuries, Maresca added: ‘For sure, it can be a concern. I’m a little bit worried about that. But we are not in a moment where we can say we decide to save players for Sunday. This is a semi final. It’s a European competition and we want to be in the final.’
Djurgarden currently sit 11th in the Swedish Allsvenskan table after five fixtures and Maresca said: ‘Personally, I’ve watched six games. The only thing is that in the league they use players they don’t use in Conference. And in the Conference, there are players they don’t use in the league.
‘It’s not easy to analyse. Then also the pitch here is different from the one that we are used to playing. We want to try to prepare the game in the best way – thinking about all these small details that are important.’
One Swedish journalist reminded Maresca how Chelsea’s squad is worth 44 times that of Djurgarden, according to transfer figures. The Blues boss replied: ‘You don’t win games and titles with money. We know that very well. It’s not about how much you spend. You are not going to win games or titles just because you spend big. You have to spend money, but in the right way.’
Meanwhile, Pedro Neto spoke of his relief that he, along with Marc Cucurella, Nicolas Jackson and Enzo Fernandez, made it home from a trip to the Madrid Open to watch the tennis after their weekend win over Everton. Maresca gave his squad some free time after Saturday’s 1-0 Premier League victory but the trip coincided with the power outages in the Spanish capital.
Neto also nearly got smacked in the head by a shot from the German world No 2 Alexander Zverev, but said: ‘Luckily we went to the airport and we made it.’
Meanwhile, Djurgarden have been rocked by a bout of flu going around their camp, with their chairman Lars-Erik Sjoberg also resigning after being caught up in an online racism storm.