Enzo Maresca believes the physical conditioning of the teams was the main factor in Chelsea’s 4-1 defeat to Celtic whilst still recognising there are areas where his team has to improve.

The Blues started brightly and had three great chances to score inside the opening ten minutes before Celtic grew into the match and scored twice before half-time.

Chelsea began the second period strongly once more and could have scored on several occasions before two goals in three minutes in the final quarter of an hour meant to victory was going to SPL champions.

Maresca’s side, who grabbed a late consolation through a Christopher Nkunku penalty, had 23 shots to Celtic’s 14 and had almost two-thirds of the possession. But Brendan Rodgers’ side equally could have won by a greater margin as they too had some great chances which they failed to capitalise on.

This was Celtic’s fifth match of pre-season, having beaten Manchester City 4-3 in their last outing, and they kick-off their SPL title defence next weekend.

In contrast, this was Maresca’s second game in charge of the Blues and his starting XI included several players who are still getting back to full fitness after lengthy lay-offs.

Maresca said: ‘The result is always important [but] for sure in this moment, we need to analyse the game in general. On the ball the team was ten times better than we were against Wrexham because we can see the amount of chances we had in the first half and the second half.

‘Off the ball, for sure, we need to improve things. You can see sometimes we confuse when we need to play short and when we need to play a little bit longer but that is part of the process.’

He continued: ‘We are trying so many things and we have not had the chance to try everything because we only started 15 to 20 days ago.

‘I think after five minutes, we had already had two or three chances to score a goal and in the second half, until the third goal, our team was very good, again creating chances.

‘I think we didn’t concede a shot [in the second half] until the 75th minute and then we conceded the third goal and it became more difficult.

‘For me, it is important to realise the difference between us and them in the physical conditioning. You can see they had already played four games in pre-season and they are starting their official season very soon. Whereas for us, we struggled a little bit physically.’

‘The biggest difference with us and them was the physical condition,’ he later reiterated. ‘It is very clear they are ready to start [their league season] and we have just had our second [pre-season] game and some of our players have only played 45 minutes so the difference was huge.’

Maresca recognised there was more to the defeat than simply the conditioning though.

The Italian highlighted a couple of issues from the Celtic defeat, both on the ball and off it.

He said: ‘For sure we need to improve many things off the ball. As you said, one of the things we did badly today was when the ball was not under pressure, we maintained a high line but when the ball is not under pressure, you need to drop.

‘We are still confusing some things on the ball and off the ball. It is normal in this moment when we are trying to do something new but game-by-game and training session after training session, we are going to be ready [for the start of the Premier League season].’

Chelsea’s focus now turns to Wednesday’s match with Club America in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, before matches against Manchester City in Ohio and Real Madrid in Charlotte.

There were tens of thousands of Chelsea fans in attendance at the Notre Dame Stadium in Indiana and Maresca was keen to thank them for their support.

Maresca said: ‘Our fans were fantastic. It was a shame today but hopefully during the season we can make them happy and for sure, we are going to make that happen.’

Tickets for all three of Chelsea’s remaining pre-season matches are still available and can be purchased via the below links.

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