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Analysis: Why Enzo Maresca might not be the right man to take Chelsea back to the top

Analysis: Why Enzo Maresca might not be the right man to take Chelsea back to the top

Delen

Since BlueCo took over Chelsea in May 2022, no head coach has lasted a full year in charge of the men’s side. Enzo Maresca will hope to change that having been appointed to lead the Blues into the 2024/25 season with a contract till 2030, but quite a lot will need to change, both on his and the club’s part if he is to stay the course.

By Neel Shelat

Despite spending over a billion Euros to try and improve the squad since taking over, BlueCo have paradoxically taken Chelsea from being a consistent top-four club to one that has struggled to qualify for Europe in the last couple of seasons.

Of course, closer inspection will reveal a number of flaws in their approach (which we will dig into later). Among their many issues has been a lack of stability in the head coach position, for which the owners themselves must shoulder the majority of the blame. Their appointments have been hit-and-miss so far, and even when they seemed to be getting things right, they did not afford their candidates nearly enough time or trust.

Enzo Maresca is the man who will take up this precarious position next, although accepting the offer must have been a bit of a no-brainer for him considering his previous experience. The 44-year-old Italian tactician has only spent a year and a half in a senior head coach role between stints at Parma and Leicester City, having previously served as an assistant at Sevilla before joining Manchester City’s academy setup. A job of this stature must have simply been too tempting for him to refuse.

From Chelsea’s perspective, though, it is worth assessing whether Maresca is the right man to lead them back towards the top four. In order to do so, let us take a look at his work so far and use that to predict how he might fare at Stamford Bridge.

Championship Dominance with Leicester City

Maresca’s most recent job got him the most attention as he led Leicester City to a Championship-winning campaign to send them straight back up to the Premier League in his very first season at the club. The Foxes’ style of play was just as eye-catching as their results and points tally, which stood at 97 at the end of the season. Those who had followed Maresca’s career previously would not have been too surprised, though, as the Italian head coach continued to adopt a heavily positional possession-dominant approach.

Leicester averaged over 62% possession in the league last season, scored the second-most goals (89) and conceded the fewest (41). They also accumulated the highest xG tally in the division.

Indeed, watching Leicester City did not seem too dissimilar to watching Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City at times – unsurprisingly so too as Maresca was a part of the coaching staff that won the treble in 2022/23. The Italian tactician’s views on the game are almost exactly the same as the legendary Spaniard’s as he too believes in dominating and retaining possession to the maximum degree, controlling games with patient play and minimising the risk of a counterattacking threat from the opponents.

Clearly, he was able to achieve all of this last season, but his achievements must be caveated by the fact that Leicester City had arguably the best squad with by far the biggest wage bill in the English second tier. Maresca’s tactical approach is heavily suited to such dominant teams, but Chelsea are not in such a position at the moment. So, assessing Maresca’s work at a promotion challenger rather than a promotion favourite should help us form a better prediction.

Causes For Concern From Parma

In relative terms, Parma were in a very similar position in Italy when Maresca took over as Chelsea are in England right now. They too were underperforming under new ownership having been relegated to Serie B in the first season under the Krause Group, though their issues were more inherited than created by the party that took over.

Maresca was given a full pre-season to prepare Parma for life in the second tier, and yet they seemed rather taken aback by the competition when the season started as a four-goal loss to Lecce marked their first away game. The former Manchester City Academy coach would only last 14 matches, in which he averaged just 1.2 points per game and watched his side concede 3 goals every two games on the whole.

The issue was that Maresca attempted to employ an overly attack-minded approach with a squad that was not by far the best in the division, so their defensive frailties were consistently being exploited. It could be argued that he learnt a lesson from this failure and adapted by moving from a 2-3-4-1 attacking shape at Parma to more of a 3-2-4-1 in the Championship, though the overall stylistic aspects of his tactics remained largely unchanged.

We have also not yet touched on how the Italian coach sets his side up out of possession. His heavily player-oriented pressing approach may have helped Leicester City win possession in the final third more often than anyone else in the Championship, but it was exploited at Parma and likely will be by better-quality opposition in the English top-flight.

Quite simply, Maresca will need to prove that he has a level of flexibility which he hasn’t shown so far if he is to succeed in the Premier League with Chelsea.

Chelsea’s Lack of Stability

The biggest stumbling block for Maresca at Chelsea might not be his tactics but rather the way the club has been run of late. Thoughtless transfer spending and constant squad overhauls are not the hallmarks of a smartly run club, nor is the lack of an overarching vision in terms of the playing style or tactics that the decision-makers want to see employed.

Whether or not by design, Chelsea’s squad towards the end of last season was decently suited to Mauricio Pochettino’s more end-to-end transitional approach. The jump from this to Maresca’s control-obsessed positional play is quite a big one, so it will require excellent transfer business to be smoothly conducted. Even so, expecting it to happen over one summer is unrealistic.

Unfortunately, Chelsea’s current owners have shown neither the foresight nor the patience to be trusted to allow such a transition to take place. Unless they too change their ways, Maresca’s move to Stamford Bridge might be doomed to fail.

(Cover image from IMAGO)

You can follow every Chelsea game live with FotMob — featuring deep stats coverage including xG, shot maps, and player ratings. Download the free app here.

Analysis: Why Enzo Maresca might not be the right man to take Chelsea back to the top

Since BlueCo took over Chelsea in May 2022, no head coach has lasted a full year in charge of the men’s side. Enzo Maresca will hope to change that having been appointed to lead the Blues into the 2024/25 season with a contract till 2030, but quite a lot will need to change, both on his and the club’s part if he is to stay the course.

By Neel Shelat

Despite spending over a billion Euros to try and improve the squad since taking over, BlueCo have paradoxically taken Chelsea from being a consistent top-four club to one that has struggled to qualify for Europe in the last couple of seasons.

Of course, closer inspection will reveal a number of flaws in their approach (which we will dig into later). Among their many issues has been a lack of stability in the head coach position, for which the owners themselves must shoulder the majority of the blame. Their appointments have been hit-and-miss so far, and even when they seemed to be getting things right, they did not afford their candidates nearly enough time or trust.

Enzo Maresca is the man who will take up this precarious position next, although accepting the offer must have been a bit of a no-brainer for him considering his previous experience. The 44-year-old Italian tactician has only spent a year and a half in a senior head coach role between stints at Parma and Leicester City, having previously served as an assistant at Sevilla before joining Manchester City’s academy setup. A job of this stature must have simply been too tempting for him to refuse.

From Chelsea’s perspective, though, it is worth assessing whether Maresca is the right man to lead them back towards the top four. In order to do so, let us take a look at his work so far and use that to predict how he might fare at Stamford Bridge.

Championship Dominance with Leicester City

Maresca’s most recent job got him the most attention as he led Leicester City to a Championship-winning campaign to send them straight back up to the Premier League in his very first season at the club. The Foxes’ style of play was just as eye-catching as their results and points tally, which stood at 97 at the end of the season. Those who had followed Maresca’s career previously would not have been too surprised, though, as the Italian head coach continued to adopt a heavily positional possession-dominant approach.

Leicester averaged over 62% possession in the league last season, scored the second-most goals (89) and conceded the fewest (41). They also accumulated the highest xG tally in the division.

Indeed, watching Leicester City did not seem too dissimilar to watching Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City at times – unsurprisingly so too as Maresca was a part of the coaching staff that won the treble in 2022/23. The Italian tactician’s views on the game are almost exactly the same as the legendary Spaniard’s as he too believes in dominating and retaining possession to the maximum degree, controlling games with patient play and minimising the risk of a counterattacking threat from the opponents.

Clearly, he was able to achieve all of this last season, but his achievements must be caveated by the fact that Leicester City had arguably the best squad with by far the biggest wage bill in the English second tier. Maresca’s tactical approach is heavily suited to such dominant teams, but Chelsea are not in such a position at the moment. So, assessing Maresca’s work at a promotion challenger rather than a promotion favourite should help us form a better prediction.

Causes For Concern From Parma

In relative terms, Parma were in a very similar position in Italy when Maresca took over as Chelsea are in England right now. They too were underperforming under new ownership having been relegated to Serie B in the first season under the Krause Group, though their issues were more inherited than created by the party that took over.

Maresca was given a full pre-season to prepare Parma for life in the second tier, and yet they seemed rather taken aback by the competition when the season started as a four-goal loss to Lecce marked their first away game. The former Manchester City Academy coach would only last 14 matches, in which he averaged just 1.2 points per game and watched his side concede 3 goals every two games on the whole.

The issue was that Maresca attempted to employ an overly attack-minded approach with a squad that was not by far the best in the division, so their defensive frailties were consistently being exploited. It could be argued that he learnt a lesson from this failure and adapted by moving from a 2-3-4-1 attacking shape at Parma to more of a 3-2-4-1 in the Championship, though the overall stylistic aspects of his tactics remained largely unchanged.

We have also not yet touched on how the Italian coach sets his side up out of possession. His heavily player-oriented pressing approach may have helped Leicester City win possession in the final third more often than anyone else in the Championship, but it was exploited at Parma and likely will be by better-quality opposition in the English top-flight.

Quite simply, Maresca will need to prove that he has a level of flexibility which he hasn’t shown so far if he is to succeed in the Premier League with Chelsea.

Chelsea’s Lack of Stability

The biggest stumbling block for Maresca at Chelsea might not be his tactics but rather the way the club has been run of late. Thoughtless transfer spending and constant squad overhauls are not the hallmarks of a smartly run club, nor is the lack of an overarching vision in terms of the playing style or tactics that the decision-makers want to see employed.

Whether or not by design, Chelsea’s squad towards the end of last season was decently suited to Mauricio Pochettino’s more end-to-end transitional approach. The jump from this to Maresca’s control-obsessed positional play is quite a big one, so it will require excellent transfer business to be smoothly conducted. Even so, expecting it to happen over one summer is unrealistic.

Unfortunately, Chelsea’s current owners have shown neither the foresight nor the patience to be trusted to allow such a transition to take place. Unless they too change their ways, Maresca’s move to Stamford Bridge might be doomed to fail.

(Cover image from IMAGO)

You can follow every Chelsea game live with FotMob — featuring deep stats coverage including xG, shot maps, and player ratings. Download the free app here.