Enzo Maresca Pulls A Zidane

By: chris | March 24th, 2008

And then goes completely batshit on Monday for some odd reason. First off, as you can see in the above video, Enzo – a yo-yo starter, in and out of the first team – decided he didn’t appreciate the tug from the angelic Kun Aguero and went all Zizou on his ass. (Kun gets a 8.7 for the flop.) Enter red card. Problem is it came just six minutes after Maresca had been subbed in and 3 minutes after Aguero had put Atletico ahead in a clash dubbed “The Seven Pointer”, with the winner having a firm grip on The Almighty Fourth CL Spot and millions upon millions of Champs League euros (or swiss francs, whatever it is). Sevilla lost, of course.

Then Maresca, probably not in everyone’s good graces for losing his head in such an important match, decided to slam the squad selection beforehand, instead of apologizing for his actions.

“I cannot understand why I did not start. I expected to play, but the coach is the one that decides,” he fumed.

“The problem is that when you play badly and are dropped you cannot say anything, but in this case I played well and that did not seem to be enough.

“My complaint is that I felt I was playing better than others, yet it is the other people that play.”

I’m guessing by “played well” he meant recently in games not involving Atletico, because in his six minutes Saturday Atletico got the winning goal and he managed to get a red card for being an idiot. If that’s “playing well” then playing “poorly” must involve nothing less than second degree murder.

Regardless, when you get sent off justifiably 6 minutes in, you really have no business calling out the coach. And if he really wants out (which has been hinted at for quite awhile), this is a pretty surefire way of going about it.

Now Sevilla sits 5 points below Atletico in the table in 6th place, with Racing Santander (of all teams) in 5th. It’s by no means insurmountable with 9 games left, but it’s still an uphill climb for Sevilla, and UEFA Cup is a very real possibility. And if recent performances there are any indication, that may be just peaches.