Cucurella told teammate to “put on shin pads” as he prepared for Lamine Yamal

Marc Cucurella has taken the player portion of the press conference at Chelsea ahead of tomorrow nights’ game against Barcelona, and the zany left back gave us some funny lines, as you’d expect.

He’s got a job on his hands against a really dangerous attacking side, but he looked as relaxed as ever.

Cucurella jokes he told Estevao to prepare for rough treatment

Marc Cucurella speaks in Chelsea’s press conference.

One subject kept coming up – the left back’s impending duel with Barcelona right winger (and potentially the best player in the world) Lamine Yamal. Cucurella tried to shut it down by saying it wasn’t the “Yamal-Cucurella game”, but that didn’t stop the questions.

“It’s difficult to play against them [type of players] because they have special talent and a lot of quality. It’s not Lamine [Yamal] vs Cucurella. It’s a big game. We need to have a big game.”

The full back was asked whether it had been useful to have Estevao Willian in training to help him prepare for the challenge of Yamal:

“I told Estevao to put on shin pads in this training session because I’m going to be training [for Yamal] on him,” the Catalan joked.

Poor Cucurella – this is one of several occasions in this presser where he tried to crack a little joke and it fell a bit flat in the awkward scenes of the press room.

Keep on trying Marc, you’ll get them eventually…

In other Barca news…

Chelsea will be without Cole Palmer for tomorrow night’s game, which is a blow, after a surprise injury. Cucurella also joked about how he “didn’t believe” what had happened.

In his presser, Enzo Maresca spoke a little about the increasingly impressive Marc Guiu, and what the striker might need to do to get into his plans more regularly.