“Fuming” Enzo Maresca punishes Chelsea first team players for embarrassing result | OneFootball

It is being reported that Chelsea’s first team lost to an U21 side at Cobham in midweek, leading to a “fuming” manager Enzo Maresca cancelling a planned day off for the senior players yesterday.

Donell McNeilly scored twice and Chizzy Ezenwata got one as a combined U16/U21 side beat a collection of the senior players not called up for international duty. We don’t know who exactly played, but one would imagine stars like Malo Gusto, Benoit Badiashile, Tosin Adarabioyo, Romeo Lavia, Jadon Sancho and Christopher Nkunku all featured.

It’s not clear if the likes of Nicolas Jackson and Noni Madueke, expected back from injury after this international break, played. Although we would expect that a big part of organising this game was to get them up to speed with some semi-official minutes.

McNeilly shows Enzo Maresca what he can do once again

Donell McNeilly playing for Chelsea’s youth teams.

We’ve yet to hear any official confirmation of this from one of the big Chelsea journalists, but this account are usually reliable, and the fact they’ve included the goalscorers makes the story even more believable.

McNeilly scoring twice is interesting – he’s been a complete goal machine at every youth level, and it was somewhat surprising to see fellow youngster Shim Mheuka (who is still just 17) called up to first team action before him earlier this month when injuries hit the first team.

Maybe these goals will be what convince Maresca that he should give 19 year old McNeilly a proper chance? The fact he’s into the final 6 months of his contract explains why he’s not yet had a chance, but this sort of thing should only increase interest from potential free transfer suitors in the summer.

Surely a Premier League team is going to give a player with that much youth level pedigree a chance?