Enzo Maresca says Chelsea’s outcasts Raheem Sterling and Axel Disasi have easy lives compared to that of his own 75-year-old father who has spent the last five decades working as a fisherman.
The Chelsea manager was quizzed at his Friday press conference on how Sterling and Disasi were continuing to train separately from the first team with no chance of reconciliation.
It comes as the Professional Footballers’ Association have now gotten involved in trying to ensure that the pair have a proper platform to train as they await the opening of the January transfer window.
Maresca responded: ‘My father is 75 years old and for 50 years he has been a fisherman, working from two o’clock in the morning until 10 o’clock in the morning.
‘This is a hard life. Not for players.’
Sterling, who is still only 30, has two years remaining on his contract and is the Blues’ highest-paid player on more than £300,000 a week.
Enzo Maresca (right) has told Raheem Sterling that his father (left) has had a hard life – not the £300,000-a-week star
Sterling and Axel Disasi (right) have been training alone with no route back to the Blues team
Sterling revealed the brutal reality of life in Chelsea’s ‘bomb squad’ this week in a post on Instagram
He broke his silence when posting a picture of himself on Instagram as he prepared to train under the lights of Cobham at 8.21pm last week.
Disasi, 27, is believed to be on around a third of Sterling’s salary and contracted until 2029.
Maresca continued: ‘I’ve been in Raheem’s situation and Axel’s situation as a player and for sure, I know that it’s not the best feeling for a player because if you are a player, that means that you want to train and play games. The situation is the situation.
‘I know that the club is giving them the opportunity to work in the right way. I know it’s something that you like and you want to talk about, but it’s not just Chelsea, it’s any club in the world.
‘I can promise you, Italy, Spain, England, France, USA, Brazil, any club in the world, when for any reason the player and the club doesn’t find a solution and you give the player all the tools to do training sessions and to do everything, but if you are not involved in the squad you are not involved in the squad.
‘It’s not about Chelsea, it’s about any club in the world.’
