Enzo Maresca insisted the Club World Cup will become the biggest trophy in football. Chelsea boss Maresca masterminded a magnificent win over reigning European champions Paris Saint Germain which also nets them £97m in prize money.
For all the stick that FIFA’s competition has taken, Chelsea can now boast their second major trophy of the season and the first winners of the new-look tournament. Maresca also insisted that in years to come the Club World Cup will grow in importance after the first edition in the United States.
Maresca said: “I think it will become as important as the Champions League and we value it as much as winning the Champions League.” The Italian coach also revealed his tactical masterplan and how to defeat PSG who had dominated last season under Luis Enrique.
Cole Palmer was the match winner with two goals and an assist as he showed once again that he is a big game player. Maresca said: “These are the games where we expect Cole to appear. Big games and big moments and once again he showed how good he is.
“Analysing them we saw that was a good opportunity if we could exploit that space. We put Cole and Malo on that side and created a little overload. It was just a game plan. We tried to use a different game plan.
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“We tried to help the players to be in position to give everything. Today it worked quite well. It has been the effort from the team and all the players. I am very happy especially for them because they deserve the moment.
“I reiterate we analysed the game and we could say there was quite a lot of space on the left wing for PSG and we could see we could exploit that flank. I think we win the game in the first ten minutes.
“We came out on the pitch to show we were here to give it our all and take the win. I have the utmost respect for the opponents. You can give your players a detailed plan but they have to exploit it and they do so well.
“We respect PSG however we had a plan to prepare with a view to win the game. Had you told me we were going to win 3-0 in the first half I wouldn't have expected that. We knew we were going to put up a fight and we knew our squad is really competitive against talented teams.

“In my personal opinion if you give them time then you will be worse off and that is what we tried to do. The idea was to go man to man. PSG are so good if you give them time you will struggle. You have to press them intensely.
“The first ten minutes we were able to do it and our idea worked. We knew it wasn't possible to do it for a long time. We tried to be very aggressive and don't give them time. on the all we had some very good moments, we exploited the space.”
Maresca also explained his end-of-match bust up with PSG boss Enrique as the rival bosses were involved in ugly scenes. He added: “After the final whistle I approached LuIs to talk to him and i saw that something was going on but I don't know what happened really.”
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