The Blues face a Real Madrid team who will be playing their third match of pre-season, having lost 1-0 to AC Milan on Wednesday and 2-1 to Barcelona on Saturday.

And there will be some familiar faces involved for Los Blancos, with our 2009/10 double-winning manager Ancelotti in charge and former Blues Thibaut Courtois and Antonio Rudiger starting both matches so far this summer.

Ancelotti and Maresca have known each other since the turn of the millennium as it was the Real boss who took our new head coach back to Italy as a player in 2000 when he signed the midfielder from West Bromwich Albion while in charge of Juventus.

Ancelotti, who has won five Champions League titles as a manager, praised Maresca in the build up to tomorrow night's match at the Bank of America Stadium and backed his fellow Italian to excel at Stamford Bridge.

Maresca said: 'This is a process. You cannot think after a month that everything is going to work in the right way.

‘I really appreciated Carlo’s words. I worked under Carlo and his career is something unbelievable.

‘He knows better than me and better than many, many people in this business, the way to reach something important.

‘I worked with Carlo when he was near enough my age in this moment and he was sacked by Juventus but at the end, it is not something magic that you can reach in two days. That is something different. That is PlayStation, not football.

‘Day-by-day, you need to work and you need time and I know most head coaches ask for time and it sounds like an excuse but it is not an excuse, it is the reality.’

The contest at the Bank of America Stadium, home of NFL side Carolina Panthers and MLS team Charlotte FC, will be Chelsea's fifth and final game of our USA tour.

The 2-2 draw with Wrexham in Santa Clara was followed by a 4-1 loss to Celtic in Notre Dame. Maresca's men then impressed on their way to a 3-0 win over Club America in Atlanta before Saturday's 4-2 defeat against Manchester City in Ohio.

Maresca has continually stressed he is not concerned by results at this stage of pre-season, instead focussing on his players implementing what they are working on in training.

Our head coach said: ‘There are always good things and bad things. There have been more good things than bad things in this moment.

‘For sure, we don’t like to lose games, especially like we lost the last one, but in terms of progressing and improving, the team is improving and I am very happy about that.’

There was good news for Maresca on Monday as striker Nicolas Jackson moved another step closer to returning to action following injury.

Maresca said: ‘Nico has this morning had his first complete session with us, even if it was a very light session because we played less than 48 hours, so this morning was very, very light. But at least he worked with us, that was important.’

Tickets are still available to watch Chelsea take on Real Madrid at the Bank of America Stadium in our last game in the USA in 2024, as well as Club Chelsea packages on sale now.