Chelsea’s wait for a first win on their tour of the United States — and a first victory of the Enzo Maresca era — goes on after they were soundly beaten by Celtic in Indiana.
Maresca’s side needed a late goal to rescue a draw in their tour opener against Wrexham — a team just promoted to League One, England’s third tier — and Chelsea had an even more difficult time against the Scottish champions.
Celtic are further on in their pre-season preparations than Chelsea — they beat Manchester City 4-3 earlier this week — but there was still plenty of food for thought for Maresca as he prepares his team for the new campaign.
Does Maresca already have a defensive issue to solve?
It was always going to take time for the Chelsea squad to adapt to the way Maresca wants to play, but the amount of chances they are conceding is cause for alarm.
Wrexham were able to get in behind them on a regular basis in the second half of their tour opener and scored twice. There was some mitigation for that because the three players at the back, the system Maresca likes to use with the right-back inverted, were an unusual combination of academy graduate Josh Acheampong, Wesley Fofana and Ben Chilwell.
However, Maresca employed the much stronger trio of Benoit Badiashile, Levi Colwill and Fofana from the outset against Celtic and the same problems occurred.
There were huge gaps behind them for Celtic to exploit and that is exactly what they did. Granted this was Celtic’s fifth pre-season game compared to Chelsea’s second — and the Scottish champions looked much sharper in the opening 45 minutes — but it would be wrong to dismiss some of Chelsea’s issues as simply the result of a lack of match fitness.
It was just too easy to play a ball over the top or slide one down the line. The first goal, scored by Matt O’Riley in the 19th minute, came from Chelsea being caught out by a short corner and then just standing off as Celtic played the ball around people doing good impressions of mannequins.
The introduction of Tosin Adarabioyo for Fofana coincided with a better second-half display for around 30 minutes, although that was partly due to Maresca’s side dominating possession much more and Celtic concentrating on trying to defend their lead.
Yet Chelsea found a way to self-destruct again late on as Badiashile passed the ball straight to Luis Palma for the third and Michael Johnston ran on to Palma’s ball for the fourth.
With Chelsea’s final two games of their pre-season tour being against Manchester City and Real Madrid (they face Club America before that), you wonder how many goals those two superior sides might manage if things are not tightened up quickly.
