Chelsea fared well as underdogs in their most recent outing in a final. They surprised Paris Saint-Germain in last summer’s Club World Cup, racing into an unassailable 3-0 lead by half-time and disrupting the European champions thanks to a clever tactical approach from Enzo Maresca.
Perhaps there will be more of the same at Wembley. Chelsea have form when it comes to upsetting the odds in a big game, although the one problem with bringing up the PSG win before Saturday afternoon’s FA Cup final against Manchester City is that the challenge of coming up with a plan smart enough to beat Pep Guardiola is no longer Maresca’s responsibility.
The subplot is that it is quite possibly a clash between Maresca’s past and his future. For Chelsea, the moment when a season of promise began its descent into chaos is, from their perspective, when their former head coach began to act like a man who wanted to leave. The infamous comment from Maresca about his “worst 48 hours” at the club after the win over Everton in December still clouds the air at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea’s reaction will be interesting if Guardiola steps down at the end of the season and Maresca, the leading candidate to replace his former boss, joins City.
It bears repeating that Chelsea never wanted to make a mid‑season managerial change. When they mapped out the season and set Champions League qualification as the baseline target nobody envisaged that Calum McFarlane, the under-21s manager, would be leading out the first team at Wembley in May. Yet everything fell apart when Maresca walked away on New Year’s Day.
Liam Rosenior – remember him? – left 106 days into a six‑and‑half‑year deal. Chelsea were on a historically bad run in the league, sections of the dressing room were in open revolt and the speed of Rosenior’s demise had inevitably brought questions around the wisdom of the BlueCo project back to the surface.
McFarlane’s return for a second stint as caretaker has brought little improvement. Chelsea are weighed down by players who turn the tap on and off too readily. The defiance flowed when they beat Leeds in their FA Cup semi-final. There was barely a trickle when they faced Nottingham Forest reserves in their next game and all but destroyed their hopes of European qualification via the league by losing 3-1 at home.
That shocker of a performance made it almost impossible to feel any admiration for Chelsea when they decided to turn up at Anfield last weekend and played the better football in a 1-1 draw with Liverpool. Then again, that knack of lifting it against tougher opposition is why it would be folly to give them no chance of upsetting City. It would be very Chelsea, even though they were thumped by City at Stamford Bridge last month and have not beaten Guardiola’s side since the 2021 Champions League final, a year before the Roman Abramovich era came to an enforced end.
McFarlane, who drew with City during his initial caretaker stint in January, could be the unlikely hero. Ending a run of six straight defeats in Wembley finals by winning the FA Cup for the first time since 2018 would salvage a modicum of respect at the end of a needlessly embarrassing season. But it would also show how Chelsea’s players have let themselves down. Some miss Maresca and many did not take to Rosenior, but the way they have tuned out since the turn of the year cannot continue if anything substantial is to be achieved in the long run.
“It’s tough to hear because you know the work that you put in every single day,” the Belgian midfielder Roméo Lavia said this week, but sometimes the truth hurts. Fixing the culture in the dressing room will be a key aim for whoever becomes Chelsea’s next manager. Xabi Alonso, the standout candidate, seems ideally placed to push the squad into line. Alonso, who had a glittering playing career, would have the support of the players and it is understood that talks over the former Bayer Leverkusen and Real Madrid manager are moving in the right direction.
The situation is expected to accelerate after the final. Chelsea have other names on the list and also like Andoni Iraola, who is wanted by Crystal Palace, but they have been tracking Alonso since 2023. Convincing the 44-year-old to move to Stamford Bridge would be a big boost for the project. Chelsea, after all, are not as far off as it may seem to their many critics. Reece James and Moisés Caicedo have signed new deals. Levi Colwill is back from injury and Cole Palmer is one of the league’s stars. Chelsea are in a period of “self-reflection”. They know they need to help the array of young talent at their disposal by bringing in some experience, and they will be listening to the new manager’s recommendations.
“The day I lose belief, I will probably be the first one to leave this place,” Lavia said. “If you want to succeed, you have to be 100% into it. When you’re in the building, never at any point do you see there’s a loss of belief. I believe that we will turn it around and get back to the Chelsea everyone knows.”
The Chelsea everyone knows were a winning machine. The odd cup here and there was never enough for Abramovich. Yet the Chelsea of today have turned into something different. Beating City would be cause for celebration but the concern is it would be a flash in the pan. Chelsea must not lose sight of the bigger picture if they want to put the past six months behind them.