Charlotte (AFP) – Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca lashed out at the two-hour weather delay that disrupted his team’s Club World Cup victory over Benfica on Saturday, suggesting the tournament should be played elsewhere in future. Chelsea powered into the quarter-finals after defeating Benfica 4-1 in extra-time after a game that took 4hrs 39mins to complete following a two-hour stoppage due to a storm warning. It was the sixth time that a game has been halted at the tournament due to widely used rules in the United States that require outdoor sporting events to be halted if there is a chance of lightning.
Maresca said afterwards the number of games that had been disrupted should prompt a rethink. “For me personally, it’s not football,” the Chelsea boss said. “It’s already (six) games they suspended here. I think it’s a joke. It’s not football. It’s completely amazing, it’s completely something new that I struggle to understand. I can understand that for security reasons, you have to suspend the game. But if you suspend seven or eight games, that means that probably this is not the right place to do this competition.”
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Chelsea had been poised to wrap up victory after Reece James’s second-half free-kick left them 1-0 up with four minutes left to play. But the storm warning forced the players off the field, and it was nearly two hours before play resumed. “It was one of the best performances of the last few weeks,” Maresca said. “The game was very good for 85 minutes, then we stopped for two hours, and when we started it was a completely different game. It’s not the same game because you break the tempo.”
Maresca emphasised that he remained a fan of the Club World Cup, which was expanded to 32 teams for the first time this year, and is being held in the United States as an informal dress rehearsal for the 2026 World Cup in North America. “It’s a fantastic competition. It’s the Club World Cup, all the best clubs are here,” he said. “But six, seven games suspended? It’s not normal. In a World Cup how many have they suspended? Probably zero. In a European (Championship), how many games? Zero. There is some problem.”
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