Chelsea hires Enzo Maresca, a former assistant to Pep Guardiola, as head coach

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Chelsea hires Enzo Maresca, a former assistant to Pep Guardiola, as head coach

2024-06-03 22:32 Last Updated At：22:41

Enzo Maresca, a former assistant to Pep Guardiola, was hired as Chelsea head coach on Monday, just weeks after leading Leicester back to the Premier League.

The 44-year-old Italian signed a five-year deal as the replacement for Mauricio Pochettino, who left by mutual consent at the end of the season, and is Chelsea's fourth permanent manager since the club came under American ownership midway through 2022.

“We are delighted to welcome Enzo to Chelsea. He has proven himself to be an excellent coach capable of delivering impressive results with an exciting and identifiable style,” Chelsea co-sporting directors Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley said.

Maresca is four years into a coaching career that has included two spells at Manchester City. He was first a reserve-team coach for the 2020-21 season and then for the 2022-23 season was the assistant to Guardiola.

Between those year-long stints at City, Maresca coached at Parma in Italy and he has just spent a year at Leicester, which he led to the second-tier Championship title and an immediate return to the Premier League.

“To join Chelsea, one of the biggest clubs in the world, is a dream for any coach. It is why I am so excited by this opportunity,” he said. “I look forward to working with a very talented group of players and staff to develop a team that continues the club’s tradition of success and makes our fans proud.”

Maresca has established a reputation for playing the kind of attractive, possession-based football preached by Guardiola, who has won six league titles in seven years at City.

“Enzo has deeply impressed us in our discussions leading up to his appointment. His ambitions and work ethic align with those of the club,” Stewart and Winstanley said.

Chelsea’s owners, Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital, will hope they have finally found the right coach after a turbulent two seasons in control of the two-time Champions League winner.

Pochettino followed Thomas Tuchel and Graham Potter at Stamford Bridge, but only lasted one season in charge of a club that has spent more than $1 billion on new players under the new regime. Former player and manager Frank Lampard also had a spell as caretaker last year.

Pochettino finished the season well, leading the team to sixth place and European qualification, and news of his departure came as a shock to many in Chelsea’s young squad.

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Pope in Belgium promises to help abuse victims after hearing of their trauma and needs

2024-09-28 21:28 Last Updated At：21:32

BRUSSELS (AP) — Pope Francis promised Saturday to “offer all the help we can” to aid clergy sexual abuse victims, after a group of Belgian survivors told him first-hand of the trauma that had shattered their lives and left many in poverty and mental misery.

Francis’ visit to Belgium has been dominated by the abuse scandal, with King Philippe and Prime Minister Alexander De Croo both blasting the Catholic Church’s dreadful legacy of priests raping and molesting children and its decades-long cover-up of the crimes.

Francis met for more than two hours late Friday with 17 survivors who are seeking reparations from the church for the trauma they suffered and to pay for the therapy many need. They said they gave Francis a month to consider their requests, which the Vatican said Francis was studying.

“There are so many victims. There are also so many victims who are still completely broke,” survivor Koen Van Sumere told The Associated Press. “I have also been lucky enough to get a diploma and build a life for myself. But there are so many people who are completely broke and who need help and who cannot afford it and who really need urgent help now.”

Van Sumere said he was encouraged by the “positive” meeting with the pope, but was waiting to see what comes of it. The meeting itself was intense, victims said, “It was at certain moments very emotional and at certain moments it was very rough. When the pope was told things he did not agree with, he also let it be known so there was real interaction," Van Sumere said.

He said he hoped as a first step that the pope would receive the victims at the Vatican in the spring during Holy Week. “And then we can not only celebrate the resurrection of Christ but perhaps also the resurrection of all victims in Belgium,” he said.

On Saturday, during a meeting with Belgian clergy and nuns at the Koekelberg Basilica, Francis acknowledged that the abuse scandal had created “atrocious suffering and wounds,” and undermined the faith.

“There is a need for a great deal of mercy to keep us from hardening our hearts before the suffering of victims so that we can help them feel our closeness and offer all the help we can,” he said.

He said the Belgian church must learn from victims and serve them. “Indeed, one of the roots of violence stems from the abuse of power when we use the positions we have to crush or manipulate others,” he said.

Francis has met with victims in the United States, Ireland and Canada, as well as in multiple occasions at the Vatican. He has cracked down on some bishops who failed to protect their flocks by passing new church rules on investigations and punishments. But the scandal has continued to fester, and Francis' record is uneven, with several high-profile cases still pending or seemingly ignored.

Most galling to Belgians was that it took the Vatican 14 years to laicize Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, who admitted in 2010 to having abused his nephew for 13 years. Francis defrocked him in March in a move widely seen as attempting to remove a problem before his visit.

After the encounter, Francis went to the royal crypt in the Church of Our Lady to pray at the tomb of King Baudouin, best known for having refused to give a parliament-approved bill legalizing abortion his royal assent, one of his constitutional duties.

Baudouin stepped down for one day in 1990 to allow the government to pass the law, which he was required to sign, before he was reinstated as king.

Francis praised Baudouin's courage when he decided to “leave his position as king to not sign a homicidal law,” according to the Vatican summary of the private encounter, which was attended by Baudouin's nephew, King Philippe, and Queen Mathilde.

The pope then referred to a new legislative proposal to extend the legal limit for an abortion in Belgium, from 12 weeks to 18 weeks after conception. The bill failed at the last minute because parties in government negotiations considered the timing inopportune.

Francis urged Belgians to look to Baudouin’s example in preventing such a law, and added that he hoped Baudouin’s beatification cause would move ahead, the Vatican said.

With the visit, Francis waded straight into Belgian politics and dragged the royal family along with him.

The royals are bound by strict neutrality and the palace immediately issued a statement distancing itself from the visit. The statement said the “spontaneous visit, on the pope’s request, was not part of the official program” and added the king and queen were there only “out of hospitality toward the pope."

Francis started the day by having breakfast — coffee and croissants — with a group of 10 homeless people and migrants who are looked after by the St. Gilles parish of Brussels.

They sat around a table at the entrance of the parish church and told him their stories, and gave him bottles of beer that the parish makes, “La Biche de Saint-Gilles.” The proceeds of the beer sales help fund the parish’s charity works.

Francis thanked them for the beer and breakfast and told them that the church’s true wealth was in caring for the weakest.

“If we want to truly know and show the church’s beauty, we should give to one another like this, in our smallness, in our poverty, without pretexts and with much love.”

The breakfast encounter was presided over by Marie-Françoise Boveroulle, an adjunct episcopal vicar for the diocese. The position is usually filled by a priest, but Boveroulle’s appointment has been highlighted as evidence of the roles that women can and should play in the church.

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