LONDON (AP) — Chelsea coach Enzo Maresca said Friday he had “no time” for reports linking him to the Manchester City job.
A report by The Athletic this week said Maresca was high on the list of candidates to take over at City when Pep Guardiola walks away.
Guardiola is contracted until the end of next season, but the report said contingency planning was underway.
“It’s 100% speculation,” Maresca said. “There is no time for this kind of thing. I have a contract here until 2029. My focus is just about this club. I’m very proud to be here."
Maresca was formerly part of Guardiola's coaching team at City. He went on to lead Leicester to promotion to the Premier League and in his first season at Chelsea won the Club World Cup and UEFA Conference League. He also secured qualification for the Champions League.
Chelsea is currently fourth in the Premier League, eight points behind first-place Arsenal.
The reports came after Maresca claimed last week that he was unhappy about a lack of support at Chelsea and said he had just endured his worst period since arriving at the club in the summer of 2024.
Maresca didn’t specify who he was referring to, but stressed it wasn’t Chelsea fans.
“The last 48 hours has been the worst since I joined the club because many people didn’t support me and the team,” he said after Chelsea’s 2-0 win over Everton in the Premier League on Saturday.
On Monday he insisted he was happy at the club and refused to go into more detail about his outburst.
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Chelsea's head coach Enzo Maresca reacts after Atalanta's Charles De Ketelaere scored his side's second goal during the Champions League opening phase soccer match between Atalanta and Chelsea, in Bergamo, Italy, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
The head of the U.S. agency for enforcing workplace civil rights posted a social media call-out urging white men to come forward if they have experienced race or sex discrimination at work.
“Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws," U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chair Andrea Lucas, a vocal critic of diversity, equity and inclusion, wrote in an X post Wednesday evening with a video of herself. The post urged eligible workers to reach out to the agency “as soon as possible" and referred users to the agency's fact sheet on “DEI-related discrimination” for more information.
Lucas' post, viewed millions of times, was shared about two hours after Vice President JD Vance posted an article he said “describes the evil of DEI and its consequences," which also received millions of views. Lucas responded to Vance's post saying: “Absolutely right @JDVance. And precisely because this widespread, systemic, unlawful discrimination primarily harmed white men, elites didn’t just turn a blind eye; they celebrated it. Absolutely unacceptable; unlawful; immoral.”
She added that the EEOC “won’t rest until this discrimination is eliminated.”
A representative for Vance did not respond to a request for comment. Lucas said Thursday evening that “the gaslighting surrounding what DEI initiatives have entailed in practice ends now. We can’t attack and remedy a problem if we refuse to call it out for what it is — race or sex discrimination — or acknowledge who is harmed.”
She added that “the EEOC’s doors are open to all,” and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "protects everyone, including white men.”
Since being elevated to acting chair of the EEOC in January, Lucas has been shifting the agency's focus to prioritize “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination,” aligning with President Donald Trump's own anti-DEI executive orders. Trump named Lucas as the agency's chair in November.
Earlier this year, the EEOC along with the Department of Justice issued two “technical assistance” documents attempting to clarify what might constitute “DEI-related Discrimination at Work” and providing guidance on how workers can file complaints over such concerns. The documents took broad aim at practices such as training, employee resource groups and fellowship programs, warning such programs — depending on how they’re constructed — could run afoul of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race and gender.
Those documents have been criticized by former agency commissioners as misleading for portraying DEI initiatives as legally fraught.
David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at the NYU School of Law, said Lucas's latest social media posts demonstrate a “fundamental misunderstanding of what DEI is.”
“It’s really much more about creating a culture in which you get the most out of everyone who you’re bringing on board, where everyone experiences fairness and equal opportunity, including white men and members of other groups,” Glasgow said.
The Meltzer Center tracks lawsuits that are likely to affect workplace DEI practices, including 57 cases of workplace discrimination. Although there are instances in which it occurs on a case-by-case basis, Glasgow said he has not seen “any kind of systematic evidence that white men are being discriminated against.”
He pointed out that Fortune 500 CEOs are overwhelmingly white men, and that relative to their share of the population, the demographic is overrepresented in corporate senior leadership, Congress, and beyond.
“If DEI has been this engine of discrimination against white men, I have to say it hasn’t really been doing a very good job at achieving that,” Glasgow said.
Jenny Yang, a former EEOC chair and now a partner at law firm Outten & Golden, said it is “unusual” and “problematic” for the head of the agency to single out a particular demographic group for civil rights enforcement.
“It suggests some sort of priority treatment,” Yang said. “That’s not something that sounds to me like equal opportunity for all.”
On the other hand, the agency has done the opposite for transgender workers, whose discrimination complaints have been deprioritized or dropped completely, Yang said.
The EEOC has limited resources, and must accordingly prioritize which cases to pursue. But treating charges differently based on workers' identities goes against the mission of the agency, she said.
“It worries me that a message is being sent that the EEOC only cares about some workers and not others," Yang said.
The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
FILE - Andrea Lucas, nominee to be a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, testifies during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing, June 18, 2025, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)
