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Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca will take a much-changed squad to Kazakhstan for tomorrow night’s Conference League clash against Astana, with Noni Madueke one of his senior players who will not travel.
Chelsea have aced their games in Europe’s third-tier competition, winning all four to move to the top of the table and virtually guarantee automatic qualification to the round of 16.
With a busy festive period ahead and an eight-hour flight to contend with, Maresca admits there will be a youthful look at his side.
When asked if this match was an opportunity to rest the senior players, he said: “Some of them will be here (in England) and some will fly with us. More or less we are going to try to manage it as we have done until today. “We have a lot of young players with us and the rest are going to be here working.”
5,606 km from home for our next #UECL shock. ✈️🌏 pic.twitter.com/5KPsk3MuFj
– Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) December 11, 2024
Madueke will remain in the UK and the England winger will return to the first XI for the match against Brentford at the weekend with Pedro Neto suspended following his booking in the thrilling 4-3 win over Spurs on Sunday.
Encouraging update on Acheampong
Teenager Josh Acheampong is likely to start tomorrow and Maresca reveals the highly-rated defender is close to agreeing a new contract following a clash that reportedly left him frozen out.
The Italian said: “With Josh everything is quite clear. We all love Josh, the club loves Josh, I love Josh and we are trying to reach an agreement. We are close, we are almost there. We’ll see.
“He is in the team and will probably play from the beginning.”
Chelsea are a big favorite to win the Conference League, but Maresca was not looking that far ahead and preferred to focus on the here and now.
“No, I have already said about this competition that the main objective is to go to the next phase and the next,” he said. “The goal is to get to the next one and if we get to the next one, then the next one. I don’t like to think about things in four or five months.
“It’s not about ambition. “I am quite ambitious and the players and the club are ambitious, but in my opinion, if you think about things in four or five months, you can lose a bit of concentration on the now.”
The players will remain in English time.
A trip to Kazakhstan is a logistical challenge, but Chelsea’s players will remain on English time in a bid to minimize disruption.
Maresca said: “We have a session every now and then and then we will fly there. We will have dinner and go to bed. Fortunately, they are five hours ahead of us, which means that when we wake up tomorrow it is already noon here in England.
“We will be there for less than 24 hours, but surely it will be more than the flight and the temperature (-11°C). On Friday morning we will land around 6 in the morning in London and it is already Friday and we have a game on Sunday, but we have to play.”
