Football
Chelsea: Josh Acheampong and Tyrique George shine in Warsaw on night Enzo Maresca ‘fell in love’
This was the night Enzo Maresca fell in love — or so he claims.
Chelsea’s Italian manager has used the Conference League to test things out and throw young players in at the deep end, but starting two teenagers in the cauldron-like atmosphere of the Marshall Józef Piłsudski Legia Warsaw Stadium in the quarter-finals displayed a new level of boldness.
It took just four minutes for that shift of positions and personnel to tell, as goalkeeper Kacper Tobiasz spilt Reece James’s shot and allowed George to steal in and roll calmly into the net for his first senior goal. Adrenalised, he took on Legia’s hostile atmosphere of flares and pyrotechnics and intimidating tifos head on, knee-sliding in front of the roaring home crowd, intimidated by nothing and no one.
