I think we have to be careful about things like this and I wouldn’t encourage Enzo Maresca to publicly call out his players. However, there are fine limits to this and perhaps a bit more transparency is needed in this situation.
Calling out players can be counterproductive. We’ve seen it happen before. It may be motivating for some players, but it may destroy confidence for others. So I don’t actively encourage our coaches to publicly call out players. But he should definitely tell Robert Sanchez the home truth one-on-one in a more private setting, and perhaps be more diplomatic with his answers in public.
“I’m very happy with Robert, he’s been fantastic with us,” Maresca said after the loss to Liverpool. “Not only does it build from the back, it also makes saves.”
Hmm, are you still happy? Are you really happy? If so, I think I might be alone.
Sanchez clearly should have blocked Curtis Jones’ winner yesterday and before that he even almost gave up a goal by passing straight to Diaz, and on another day it almost led to a goal. There were other strange kickouts in this game as well and Sanchez was generally poor.
Again, no one is asking Maresca to come out and scold Sánchez. But I don’t think anyone is buying this, and I personally don’t like seeing things that are clearly untrue.
I can also understand Maresca’s idea of protecting the goalkeeper here and I think that’s fair. Maybe he thinks Sanchez will react better by saying this. Maybe so, maybe not.
But Maresca is usually the one who just comes out and says what’s going on, which makes these comments even more surprising. I have admired his candor since he joined our club.
Sanchez is not good overall. Yes, he had a very good performance and I will continue to mention that performance because it is very important to keep the balance. But overall he is too inconsistent and we lose more than we gain. He’s a huge mistake forever. He needs to be replaced. More details will be covered in another article today.
