Claude Makélélé resigns managerial post at Asteras Tripolis after club interference
Yesterday at 07:33 PM
Man of principles
Claude Makélélé was appointed the new head coach of Greek Super League side Asteras Tripolis last month, but after just three games and less than a month in charge, the Chelsea legend has resigned his post!
That decision certainly had nothing to do with results, with Maka guiding the club to two draws and then a win over the weekend, but rather it was due to broken promises and interference from the higher-ups, as he explained in an interview earlier this week.
"They promised me full control of the team. It was my decision who played or didn't play. Transfers were not my responsibility. [But] I don't want people telling me who should or shouldn't play.
"In the last game, they insisted a key player [Darnell Eric Bile] should be benched. The player has a small amateur salary, but he's the best player in the team. I brought him on for just 20 minutes — he got two assists, and we won the game. But they didn't want him [to play]. They thought they could control whether he plays because he hadn't signed a [new] contract [with the club]. I used him because of his quality."
"[...] I love the job, but I can't accept when people interfere and tell me what I can or cannot do."
-Claude Makélélé; source: London World
If you squint a bit, it's pretty easy to draw parallels between this situation and, say, the whole Ben Chilwell situation at Chelsea.
Enzo Maresca made it pretty clear that it would be best for Chilly to move teams this summer. That didn't happen, despite the club's best efforts, presumably, to make that happen. We might never know whether Maresca was fully on-board with the club's decision and attempted force-out — but either way, Chilwell has been reintegrated to a certain extent once the transfer window closed. He has even made an appearance in the League Cup, avoiding (to everyone's credit, including Chilly's) any further escalation of the drama.
As far as Makélélé, these sorts of situations are probably not uncommon in football, but he's obviously a man of principle and that's commendable. Hopefully he finds another, more principled team, for his next job ... or comes back to Chelsea to help out in the Academy as he had been doing for four years previous.
