Rumoured 5 year deal
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The footballing world was left pretty shocked last week when Mauricio Pochettino’s departure from Chelsea was announced. It came after the Blues won all of their final five Premier League games, and only the top three clubs had a better 2024 in the division. After all sorts of rumours as to who Todd Boehly and the Chelsea hierarchy would turn to as the next manager, it now looks like the club have found their new man – Leicester City’s Enzo Maresca. Chelsea are reportedly ready to offer the Italian a five-year deal after being granted permission to speak to the Leicester manager, but will still need to agree compensation, which is set to be around £10 million (€11.74m) for the Foxes to release their manager.
The Italian won the Championship in his first season as a senior manager in England with the Foxes, getting 97 points and sending the East Midlands club straight back to the Premier League. However, his rigid style of play did come under some scrutiny at times, and Leicester did boast the most valuable squad in the division up until last week’s latest Championship market value update where Leeds’ young squad overtook them. Maresca’s journey in football has been a slightly unusual one since his playing days, and heading to Chelsea would certainly mark a meteoric rise. Here at Transfermarkt, with the help of our expertise from Italy, we bring you more on Maresca’s journey in management so far and whether that could lead to him being a success at Stamford Bridge.
Pep Guardiola’s influence in management continues
Pep Guardiola is widely thought of as the best manager in football. Many feel the Spaniard is the best ever. And his influence on the game doesn’t end with his own teams. Right now there are a number of managers in top jobs around Europe who all have one thing in common – they have worked with Guardiola. Mikel Arteta at Arsenal, Xabi Alonso at Bayer Leverkusen, departing Barcelona manager Xavi, Vincent Kompany is reportedly set to become the new Bayern Munich manager, even Erik ten Hag of Manchester United, and now potentially Maresca at Chelsea. All of those bosses worked with Guardiola either as a coach or towards the end of their playing careers.
After being assistant manager to Manuel Pellegrini at West Ham, Maresca was given the Man City U23 job in August 2020, and had great success with the young Sky Blues. Working closely with Guardiola, Maresca led the team to the Premier League 2 title, and managed the likes of Oscar Bobb, Roméo Lavia, and Cole Palmer as they developed closer to the first team. Palmer scored 13 in 16 for Man City U23’s with Maresca in charge. After a disastrous and short managerial job with Parma in Serie B, Maresca returned to Man City – this time as Guardiola’s assistant for the 2022/23 treble winning season. Not a bad campaign to have your CV associated with.
Enzo Maresca’s failure as Parma manager
Marius Soyke is a content manager for Transfermarkt based in Germany, but is a huge Parma fan and remembers Maresca’s time in Italy well: “Maresca’s appointment was actually celebrated in Parma with a great deal of excitement. They wanted a ‘project coach’ who could build a young team and teach them an attractive style of play.” At the time Maresca was just 41 years old and seen as a coach for the future, but Soyke explains there was still lots of pressure at Parma, “There was also the ambition to return directly to Serie A, with many new players signed to try and achieve this. In addition to talents such as Adrián Bernabé, who Maresca knew from Man City, or Ange-Yoan Bonny, there were also experienced warriors such as Franco Vázquez and, above all, Gianluigi Buffon.”
Maresca won just four of his 14 matches in charge at Parma, losing five and registering a points per game average of only 1.21ppg. Soyke reveals some of the reasons why it didn’t work out for the Italian, “I think everyone involved in the appointment has failed a little because of the reality of Serie B. As in many second leagues, success there is not just down to a good tactical idea – the attitude and willingness to take on the fight are extremely important. Maresca later complained that the squad had been thrown together too ‘wildly’ with too many new players and was too international – I think he ultimately lacked the time to mould this team into a unit.” Maresca could be facing a similar issue at Chelsea with a bloated highly international squad.
Of course a good manager can just not be right for a particular job and maybe that was just the case at Parma with Maresca. Soyke continues, “Parma’s club owner, US investor Kyle Krause had only arrived a year earlier, and also had little experience at the time and thought that smart decisions and a good squad on paper would get them through easily. That ultimately failed two years in a row. I would doubt whether it was just Maresca’s fault in the first year. However, until he was sacked, there was very little to be seen of his playing ideas; most games during this time were decided by individual class rather than a good tactical set up.”
Effective but still criticised: Leicester’s title winning campaign under Maresca
Following Leicester’s surprise relegation from the Premier League in the 2022/23 season under Brendan Rodgers and then Dean Smith, the Foxes turned to Maresca to try and get them back to the English top-flight. Leicester boasted the highest squad value in the Championship, even more than the three promoted teams that had replaced them in the Premier League (Burnley, Sheffield United & Luton), and were expected to go straight back up. But no one could have foreseen the truly electric start they made under Maresca. They won 13 of their first 14 league games – the ‘Marescalator’ was up and running.
By Christmas it looked like Leicester were going to smash the league, and could even record the Championship’s record points total, but things took a slight turn for the worse in the last few months of the season. After being 12 points clear at the summit, and holding a 14-point cushion to third place, Leicester actually dropped to third place in mid March. Suddenly Maresca’s rigid fairly defensive tactics were coming under some scrutiny from sections of the fanbase. Nevertheless the Foxes finished the season strongly and managed to win the title and gain promotion with a game to spare.
Maresca’s team finished with best defensive record in the division, conceding just 41 goals in 46 games. Usually adopting a 4-3-3 system, Leicester were defensively solid, with a possession based style, but did also move the ball very quickly and decisively when in transition. According to Fbref, only Southampton had a higher average possession (65.5%) in the Championship this season than Leicester (61.6%). These traits may have caught the eye of the Chelsea decision makers, with the Blues squad full of technically gifted players, but it does seem from his brief history in football management, that Marsesca will need to be given time and patience to succeed in West London. Something the club haven’t often done in recent decades.