Chelsea directors disagree with Enzo Maresca after 'messages the owners gave us'

Chelsea co-sporting director Laurence Stewart has provided a contrasting view on the club's bid to get back in the Champions League - a matter of weeks after Enzo Maresca said no one has asked him to compete for a place in Europe's top tier competition.

The Blues last played in the Champions League during the 2022/23 season when they reached the quarter-final before losing out to Real Madrid. After a season without European football, Chelsea have returned to compete in the Europa Conference League after finishing sixth in the Premier League last term.

Following the departure of Mauricio Pochettino in the summer, appointed ex-Leicester boss Maresca and they have since made an impressive start to the season. and sit fourth in the table before the international break.

and attempt to return to the Champions League for the first time in three years. It's certainly the ambition of co-sporting director Stewart, who has outlined where the Blues need to be in the future.

Speaking in an interview with , Stewart said: "This is a club that needs to be in the Champions League, it’s a club that needs to be competing to win trophies consistently and we want to do that with a certain way of playing football as well. So that absolutely is the ambition.

"And then the plan has been how do we go on a path to make that possible. And that’s been around investing in talent, committing to develop talent and developing a way of playing, the way we want our teams to play.

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"One of the messages the owners gave us from the beginning is that this is not about a short-term win or a short-term project, it’s about long-term success and that’s been one of the driving things on all of the decisions that we’ve made. That, absolutely, is the idea, to try to make the club long-term successful."

Stewart's comments are different to the view Maresca had on whether Chelsea need to qualify for the Champions League. Delivering his opinion back in August, the Italian admitted the target was to improve players, rather than looking directly to compete for the Premier League or a top four spot.

Maresca said: "For us, the target at this moment is to improve players. No one from the club asked me to compete for the Premier League or compete for a Champions League spot.

"They just asked me to improve the players and improve the team. The most important thing is to be better game after game. Also, the target is to solve the economic problem in terms of selling players. From there, we try to do our best and see where we arrive."

Asked if the club's hierarchy had given him any targets for the season, Maresca replied: "Just to have the feeling that we are going in the right direction. This is a very good target already when the owner, sporting directors, the manager and the players all have the same idea - that we are going in the same direction. If it is not now then probably it could be in one month, two months, in one year but we will be there very soon.

'My dream is to compete with the teams that dominate the top four. But we know to cross that gap is not automatic. We need to work every day together. We have to be together. Nobody has said that we need to be in the top four otherwise we have failed. Nobody."