Do Maresca’s Chelsea need to learn to embrace the chaos?
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6143439/2025/02/18/athletic-fc-podcast-Chelsea-maresca-tactics/?source=dailyemail
Chelsea’s season appears to be unravelling before our very eyes.
The Blues could have topped the Premier League just two months ago, but now sit sixth and have a real fight on their hands to secure Champions League qualification.
Enzo Maresca’s side have won just two of their last nine league games and failed to register a single shot on target in their 3-0 loss against Brighton — the first time that unwanted statistic has happened to them in a Premier League game since September 2021.
On the latest episode of The Athletic FC Podcast, Ayo Akinwolere was joined by Chelsea reporter Liam Twomey and senior football writer Oli Kay to discuss why ‘Maresca-ball’ is proving so divisive with the fans.
A partial transcript has been edited for clarity and length. The full episode is available on YouTube below or in “The Athletic FC Podcast” feed on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Ayo: Liam, how well have Chelsea adapted to what Maresca wants? If you look at some of the stats from Friday (the 3-0 defeat to Brighton), Chelsea had 69.5 per cent possession but lost the xG count, had fewer shots and had no shots on target.
Now, you worked on a piece about Maresca’s controlled style of play ahead of Friday night’s game. Is there an argument to say that this team performs better under chaos than actually when they try and control a match?
Liam: It’s a nuanced one because, in attack, there’s certainly reason to think that some of Chelsea’s attackers do their best work in transition. Cole Palmer finds passes in those chaotic moments when opponents aren’t set better than just about anyone else. Nicolas Jackson, when there’s space to run in behind, is really hard to deal with. You’ve got Noni Madueke, who loves to run at back-pedalling defenders. And Pedro Neto showed at Wolves, probably more than he has done at Chelsea so far, that he can be a super dangerous transition player.
You think about the goal they scored against Newcastle at Stamford Bridge earlier in the season. The sublime pass that Palmer played to Neto and then to Jackson. I think that was seven seconds from one end of the pitch to the other. That is not Enzo Maresca’s vision for Chelsea and how they should play. In fact, after that game was his first mention of, “We don’t want to get into a basketball game”. But there is definitely an argument that playing that way weaponises Chelsea’s attackers to the fullest extent.
But we also have to acknowledge that Chelsea were historically bad defensively under Mauricio Pochettino. The constant chaos and the kind of unstructured nature of the team were a big part of that. They made so many mistakes. They were so disorganised when they were trying to defend against teams that were counterattacking them. The defence has improved this year under Maresca, but it’s not improved enough. In terms of their average expected goals against (xGA) this season, they basically expect to give up 1.4 goals a game, which is about mid-table in the Premier League. It’s actually very close to Manchester City, which would normally be a badge of honour but not this season.
So they’re not historically bad defensively by Chelsea’s modern standards, but they’re still not good enough at that end to be anything other than clinical in attack. So what we’ve seen in the last couple of months is their ruthlessness has deserted them, but their defence hasn’t improved. Therefore your margin for error shrinks to almost nothing, so you’re getting quite a few draws and losses that just look really bad and undermine the momentum that Maresca had seemed to build up.
Ayo: Oli, that comparison to City is interesting, with Maresca being a disciple of Guardiola, but also Guardiola being a coach who loves to control matches. But then you look at the personnel and experience — from Manchester City to Chelsea, it’s vastly different.
You’ve got a bunch of young kids who are still trying to figure out how they’re trying to play and find their strengths in the game. Then you’ve got a City team, maybe not this season, who historically have got some of the smartest, brightest and most experienced players. Can we expect the same from Chelsea; control at this stage in their progression?
Oli: It’s difficult. One area where I sympathise with Maresca is if you really are trying to introduce a totally new way of playing, I don’t think the schedule is conducive to that, where you’re playing every midweek. It’s been Thursday nights in the Conference League and very little recovery time before Premier League games. It’s not very easy to introduce this whole new style. But I agree with Liam, Chelsea’s best this season has been when they’ve been playing quick counter-attacking, transition-based football. That is what they’ve been good at. It’s what Cole Palmer and Nicolas Jackson have been good at. That’s where they’ve looked very good in certain matches.
(Shaun Brooks – CameraSport via Getty Images)
It’s often been when the opposition has been coming onto them and they’ve been one or two goals ahead and then they’ve been able to run riot, just like they did at Southampton and Wolves. That’s what they’ve been good at, but they seem to be going in a completely different direction. One thing that came to mind when Liam was talking earlier about Maresca and how he was saying, ‘That isn’t particularly the way I want to play’. He’s obviously a young coach wanting to play in a much slower, more controlled way.
It took me back to over 10 years ago with Brendan Rodgers at Liverpool. He arrived there as this sort of disciple of slow, patient, possession-based football and was very evangelical about it and about the way he played at Swansea. He didn’t want chaos, he didn’t want quick football – he wanted to pass teams to death.
Then he suddenly realised, ‘I’ve got (Luis) Suárez, I’ve got a very young (Raheem) Sterling, I’ve got (Philippe) Coutinho and (Daniel) Sturridge’. He flipped and he moved away from his beliefs in some ways and embraced the strengths of the squad. To me, the strengths of this young squad are quite similar; where you’ve got players who are so good on that side of the game. But Maresca seems to be diluting those strengths. Maybe it’s a step back to take three steps forward. And maybe we’ll all be looking at this in a year’s time and saying, ‘Wow, he was right to dismantle it and rebuild it along those lines.’
But at the moment, it does look like they are neutralising their strengths a bit and concentrating on things that a young, thrown-together squad aren’t terribly good at.
You can listen to full episodes of The Athletic FC Podcast for free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and watch on YouTube.
