Dennis Zakaria has detailed why Graham Potter’s spell at Chelsea didn’t work out, having fallen foul of the same issue himself.
Zakaria played for Chelsea from 2022 to 2023, joining late in the summer transfer window that year on a loan deal.
He was initially signed at the express request of Thomas Tuchel, with the German keen to add him to his midfield. But that relationship would only be a short one.
Tuchel was promptly sacked following a 1-0 loss to Dinamo Zagreb at the beginning of September. Graham Potter was brought in from Brighton and Hove Albion the following day on a five-year contract.
That saw Zakaria bombed out of the squad as Potter was tasked with dealing with the bloated squad numbers at the club. The midfielder would manage just 11 appearances across the season, totalling 600 minutes.
Potter failure
Potter’s spell in charge of Chelsea was equally unsuccessful. He was sacked just seven months after arriving in April 2023. For Zakaria, a failure to manage that squad was Potter’s downfall.
“In the end, I know he’s a coach, and he’s a good coach,” he told Zack En Roue Libre.
“I don’t want to speak badly about coaches. I would never speak badly about a coach. But he’s a good coach with a lot of good ideas who didn’t know how to manage a big squad.
“And I think that’s also why he didn’t have the success he could have had at Chelsea. For me, I’d arrived from Gladbach. I’d spent six months at Juventus, of course, but I wasn’t a big name.
“That meant it was easy for him to leave me out. He could keep all the big names involved, and I think that was important to him because he felt he couldn’t leave the big names out of the squad. And I think that’s why I ended up paying the price.”
Crazy conversations
Zakaria insists that he doesn’t want to speak ill of the former Chelsea boss, but he clearly has grudges to bear.
10 of his 11 appearances that season came under Potter, but he was by no means a regular under him. At one point he spent four months out of the group entirely, despite Potter often rotating for cup competitions.
He managed 90 minutes just one in the Premier League that entire season, for example. And he insists Potter failed to offer any valid reasons why that was the case.
“For me, honestly, that’s when the chaos started. It was crazy,” he added.
“Four months without playing. And it wasn’t four months without playing but still being with the team. It was four months without playing and not even being called up. I wasn’t in the squad.
“Out of the squad, out of the squad, out of the squad, all the time. You go and speak to the coach because you’re training well. You’re working hard, so you ask, ‘Coach, what’s happening? What can I do?’ I didn’t go to him saying, ‘This is ridiculous’ or anything like that.
“I just asked, ‘Coach, what’s the situation? What do I have to do to be in the squad, to be able to play?’ And he said, ‘Zak, you’re training well. You’re really doing everything right, but there’s no particular reason. For now, that’s just how it is. Maybe your moment will come, but for now, that’s how it is.’ And that was the response I got. It was crazy.”
