Mauricio Pochettino has claimed that Chelsea planned to sell Marc Cucurella before he became ‘the very best full-back within the Premier League’.
Cucurella joined Chelsea in a £63 million deal from Brighton in 2022 and struggled for consistency in his first two seasons at Stamford Bridge.
The 27-year-old was then one among Spain’s standout stars at Euro 2024 and went on to develop into one among the important thing performers in Enzo Maresca’s Chelsea side last season.
Cucurella continues to be a pivotal figure in Chelsea’s squad and Pochettino, who managed the Spain international for one season at Stamford Bridge, believes the dressing room environment has been key for the left-back’s development.
‘How the team finished playing, it’s the credit of all these items we’ve spoken about, not because we’re a genius in a tactical way, it’s because we create an environment that a player like Malo Gusto, who was really young and got here from to not play from Lyon, finished playing his best,’ Pochettino said during an interview with the High Performance podcast.
‘Cucurella didn’t play from the start and the club desired to sell, he became the very best full-back within the Premier League.
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‘Conor Gallagher, Enzo Fernandez, Cole Palmer, Noni Madueke, Jackson, loads of players, Caicedo, they grew through all of this, this concept to construct things on this emotional way, that is basically, really key.’
Meanwhile, Pochettino’s assistant at Chelsea, Jesus Perez, was asked why Cole Palmer quickly established himself as a key player within the team following his £42.5 million move from Manchester City in 2023.
‘He has emotional intelligence above the common footballers,’ Perez said.
‘It makes him special. What he’s able to doing with the ball is apparent but every thing else you don’t see, how he assesses situations, the way to behave, also because he’s so young sometimes, he’ll make a mistake but when he made a mistake and it was challenged he had the capability to just accept it and to say, ‘I used to be incorrect, sorry, it won’t occur again’, and that makes him great because he’s above average.’
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