CHESS BORED

Blues fans facing Enzo knight-mare

- MIKE WALTERS

ENZO MARESCA once wrote a thesis entitled 'Football and Chess' based on positional strategy and alignment of forces.

But if he becomes Chelsea's fifth head coach in 20 months, Maresca may find he needs a more dynamic approach to satisfy a demanding fan base and owners who believe success is heated in a microwave, not slowcooked on the hob.

The Blues have been down the chessboard route before with Maurizio Sarri - and it was dull.

Although they finished third in 2019, and beat Arsenal in the Europa League final, even seasoned cardiologists would have struggled to locate pulses racing amid the limited enterprise of his football.

Maresca's chess dissertation at the Coverciano, Italy's university of football, may have been rooted in sound intellect, but after two seasons of profound underachievement at Stamford Bridge, he will need to attach end product to tactical artifice.