Luis Enrique: ‘The perfect time’ – Is now the moment for Spaniard to make Premier League move to Chelsea?
Updated 06/04/2023 at 08:04 GMT
With the search for the new Chelsea manager hotting up, we take a look at a possible candidate in Luis Enrique, who is currently out of work after leaving the Spanish national team. To find out more, we got in touch with Felix Martin from Eurosport Spain in order to get to know the potential new Chelsea manager a little bit more, given how excited he is to work in the Premier League.
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Chelsea are reportedly interested in hiring former Barcelona and Spain manager Luis Enrique, with some reports suggesting that Julian Nagelsmann might prefer to wait until the end of the season.
Enrique has a stellar CV both as a player and a manager. He played for both Barcelona and Real Madrid and went on to manage the Catalans with the 2015 treble-winning team in the conversation for one of the best club sides of the century.
In order to try and find out more about Enrique, we got in touch with Felix Martin from Eurosport Spain.
We began by asking Martin about the general feeling around Enrique in Spain and what to make of him as a manager.
“Luis Enrique is a coach with a lot of character who on many occasions has had a rather complicated relationship with the press,” Martin explains.
“That finally ended up weighing on him in the Spanish national team, since the press exerted a lot of pressure on Enrique and on the players he took to the Spanish national team.
“He was blamed on several occasions for not taking players from Real Madrid or La Liga's top scorer, and yet he did take players who were barely having minutes at Barcelona.”
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Luis Enrique (España)
Image credit: Getty Images
He went on to talk more about the relationship between Enrique and the media, saying that the manager didn’t always like it when his decisions were being questioned.
“Luis Enrique has never had an easy relationship with the press, not with the Spanish national team nor previously at Barcelona.
“With the Spanish National team, he did not like to give press conferences to justify the players he had selected.
“At some point, he even became rude to some journalists who had criticised him before, not answering questions and answering with monosyllables on many occasions.”
So we have a good idea about what kind of person Chelsea would be getting in Enrique, but what about on the field? Is it too simplistic to suggest that we can expect an implementation of a similar style to what we saw at Barcelona?
“No, it is not too simple,” says Martin.
Luis Enrique is a coach whose style and philosophy is pure Barca and Spanish National Team DNA,
“That is, trying to maintain possession of the ball and trying to maintain control of the game through possession.”
This would certainly appeal to some at Chelsea. After all, the club long had eyes for Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola before he moved to the Etihad.
They also went after the likes of Carlo Ancelotti, Maurizio Sarri and even Thomas Tuchel looking for a more proactive, progressive style of football.
And does Martin think that this is the right move for Enrique after leaving the Spain job? Or should he perhaps wait for another job to come up?
“Luis Enrique mentioned not too long ago that he would like to coach in the Premier League, but that he would not go to any team.
“Therefore, it seems to me that it would be the perfect time for Luis Enrique to take charge of Chelsea as the interests of both parties would be aligned at the moment.”
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