Chelsea begin our league phase campaign in UEFA’s third competition – founded in 2021 – as the tournament favourites according to the bookmakers. Triumphing in Poland next May would make the Blues the first club to win each of UEFA’s competitions, but Maresca is not letting himself get that far ahead.

‘You cannot start the first game thinking about the final,’ he stressed.

‘You have to go game after game. It’s the way we are trying to approach the whole season. We are happy and excited about this game.

‘We have six games [in the league phase], and we will go game after game,' continued Maresca. 'To be honest, if you ask me who we are playing against in the Premier League in three games, I really don’t know. I don’t go too much into the future, otherwise there are too many games with too much information.

‘It’s better to do one, two, three games and then we see. We have six games in the group and we are going to try to play all the games in our way and to do our best.’

Being in European competition comes with its challenges, such as playing on a Thursday night and then a Sunday. But Maresca pointed out it is the same for those teams competing in the Europa League and even sometimes the Champions League, now.

‘It’s complicated. When we played Servette away, we arrived back here at 4am on Friday and then had to play Palace on Sunday. So we need to adapt.

‘It’s an official competition, so we are excited and will try to do our best. Also because it’s European competition, we need to be ready for that. It will be a good moment.’