Enzo Maresca has passionately told his Chelsea players that one of them must seize their chance to become their hero on Sunday, by grabbing the goal that beats Nottingham Forest to clinch Champions League qualification at the expense of their City Ground hosts.
The Blues boss said he could remember the last day of 2002-03 when Jesper Gronkjaer’s strike settled the winner-takes-all clash with Liverpool as Chelsea made it into Europe’s elite competition instead.
Maresca’s friend Claudio Ranieri was manager at the time, and Roman Abramovich went on to buy the club that summer. The Champions League was a huge lure to the Russian billionaire and without Gronkjaer’s winner – since described as 'the £1billion goal’ – that historical takeover might have never gone through.
‘I can feel that the players are aware that this is the game,’ Maresca said ahead of Sunday’s super-showdown with Nuno Espirito Santo’s Forest. ‘They are aware of where we are going and aware of the environment we are going to find.’
On Gronkjaer’s winner for Chelsea back in 2003, Maresca added: 'They all dream about that, to be the one that scores the goal and we finish in the Champions League.
‘If you remember some games ago, Tyrique George against Fulham, he gave us the chance to come back in the game and then at the end, we won. So you never know. It can be one defender. It can be a midfielder. You never know.’
Mail Sport told Maresca that he is now Chelsea’s longest-serving head coach under their current ownership, having outlasted the spells of Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter and Mauricio Pochettino.
‘Wow,’ he said, smiling. ‘We needed to manage noises at the beginning. But if you remember, in this room I said many times that the noise was more from outside than inside.
‘Inside, since I joined the club, it looked a normal situation. I don't have the feeling that it was a mess. It was, “big squad”, “many managers”, blah, blah, blah. But inside, it's been normal.
‘It's all about results. You have more noise if you don't get results. And you have less noise if you get results. We said that when we were second during the season, November, December, January, everyone was happy. People said, “Chelsea’s back”. Then in February, we dropped points and everyone said, “Chelsea was not good enough”. This is normal in a big club like Chelsea.’
Maresca was in a relaxed mood, even joking when he was asked about how Moises Caicedo has started every other Premier League game this season: ‘He's not going to play Sunday.’
A long pause followed, before he revealed he was winding us up. Instead, Caicedo is set to become the first Chelsea player to start all 38 league games since Cesar Azpilicueta in 2018-19.