Enzo Maresca has told Reece James he needs to become a better leader, with Chelsea’s head coach revealing how he ‘expected more’ from the 24-year-old club captain.
James featured for the first time this season last weekend, lasting less than an hour in their 2-1 Premier League loss to Liverpool after overcoming his latest hamstring injury.
Chelsea’s staff have now decided that James’s body cannot cope with two games in a week, with the skipper one of those left at home for Thursday’s Conference League trip to Panathinaikos.
Ahead of Sunday’s visit of Newcastle, Maresca lamented his lack of a ‘proper leader’ as he publicly challenged James by saying: ‘I expected from him more in terms of leadership, inside the changing room. He’s on the way, he’s doing well, he’s progressing but from Reece I expected more also in terms of leadership.
‘For me, because you are the captain, you have to give more than the rest. Sometimes, “OK, I am the captain, I can give less”. No. He’s one of the captains and I expected from him, and his team-mates expected from him, to give always more in terms of leadership.’
Enzo Maresca has called on Reece James to ‘give more in terms of leadership’ at Chelsea
The full-back recently made a return from injury during their loss to rivals Liverpool
Asked how James responded to this private conversation, Maresca said: ‘Good, that’s why I said he’s on the way. He understands we expected more from him. He’s one of our guys from the academy but this is one of the reasons why he has to show more in terms of personality.
‘When you don’t have a proper leader, you need to build that. I think we don’t have a proper leader. Probably Tosin (Adarabioyo) is one of the guys that is. The rest, we need to build them.
‘Reece is there, he’s on the way but he’s not there. He needs to make an effort in that one. Levi (Colwill) probably at the beginning of the season was not a leader but now you can see that he is one of the guys that is always speaking. We need to build that.’
James is working his way up to full fitness and, having sat out the midweek trip to the Greek capital of Athens, he could start against Newcastle. ‘It’s important that he doesn’t get injured again,’ Maresca added.
‘Every club they have some players that always get injury, injury, injury. We need to find the right solution for him and to try to help him. Probably in this moment, the solution could be to use him once a week. We’d like to use him every day because he’s a fantastic player but we need to adapt.
‘In football you never know. You can get injured walking, you never know. But we are all agreed, that for him, the solution now is to play one game a week. He agrees. He knows himself and he agrees. Hopefully in the future he can play more games.’
