Enzo Maresca: Diet Pep or too risky? A Chelsea supporter seeks answers from a Leicester fan
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5524236/2024/05/29/maresca-Chelsea-leicester-fans/
As Leicester City supporters digest the imminent departure of Enzo Maresca, their counterparts at Chelsea have been left pondering the credentials of the man most likely to replace Mauricio Pochettino at Stamford Bridge.
The Italian may have worked for Pep Guardiola, and even looks a bit like Pep Guardiola, but does he boast the same streak of coaching genius as the Catalan? What kind of tactics did he deploy in restoring Leicester to the Premier League at the first attempt? And can he manage up as well as down at a club?
We noticed some of those questions cropping up in the comments section of a piece on Maresca published this week, so we asked Dave Chidgey, a presenter on the Chelsea FanCast podcast and writer for the Chelsea fanzine cfcuk, to seek answers.
Step forward Alex, a Leicester fan also known as Ric Flair from the Big Strong Leicester Boys podcast, who has witnessed Maresca’s football first-hand.
Dave: So the first question I have for you is: are you disappointed he’s going?
Alex: Rather than being ‘disappointed’, we’re numb to it all. Maresca inherited a bin fire at Leicester. Although he was expected to get us promoted at the first time of asking, it was not a guarantee considering how quickly we’d nosedived.
He was already playing the style of football he wanted from us in less than a month, and that was really impressive. But fast forward a year and the reason Leicester fans might not be that bothered is that we’ve simply got bigger problems. The financial issues still exist. And we’re looking at it thinking, ‘Yes, he’s done a good job. But is he a great manager?’. No one knows. Is he a pragmatic manager that we might need next season back in the Premier League? Absolutely not.
He has one way of playing, and he’s unflinching and unwavering in it. No matter who you play, whether you’re winning or losing, he won’t change. And doing that with us in the Premier League…
Dave: A lot of Chelsea supporters are nonplussed about everything. These owners came in and, within a few months, fired Thomas Tuchel. Anyone after that is going to be a comedown. When they appointed Graham Potter most people thought: ‘Really?’. Pochettino split the fanbase given the Tottenham connections but, towards the end of the season, he was doing all right. So to turn to another manager — and not an ‘elite’ manager, for all that he won the Championship — has left us a bit perplexed. How worried should we be?
Alex: He’s got an aura around him that your fanbase will pick up on and that will put them more at ease. There’s something about him that suggests he is the real deal. Whether he is or not remains to be seen — it’s difficult to determine that after one season at a club who, effectively, should not have been at that level. And he nearly made a pig’s ear of it down the stretch, don’t forget.
So on the face of it, this might seem an outrageous appointment. A risk. But his ideas lend themselves to having elite players, and you’ve got some of those. And the intention to bring more in. He could do a better job than Pochettino. Yes, he’ll have to replicate what he did at Leicester early on and get off to a flier. But his principles lend himself to better players. He’s a disciple of Pep…
Dave: I’ve heard him called the Diet Pep…
Alex: He looks a bit like him if you take your glasses off, and talks like him. We all felt comforted by that aura, especially after Brendan Rodgers.
He is no-nonsense and sticks to his guns but I can see why Chelsea fans are concerned because he’s not got the credentials behind him. But look at Xabi Alonso, another Pep disciple, and what he’s achieved at Bayer Leverkusen. Enzo could be the same. And you may have snagged him early.
Dave: Chelsea supporters are actually a fairly level-headed lot. We’ll give him a chance. We’ll back him. But our patience is fairly thin after the last couple of years.
He’s very stubborn, has a philosophy and a way of playing. That’s all very well and good if you’re Guardiola and you have some of the best players in the world, but I’ve seen an Italian manager at Chelsea who was very stubborn and wouldn’t change his ways or his philosophy — Maurizio Sarri. Some will point to him winning the Europa League, but really, Eden Hazard won us the Europa League. It had nothing to do with Sarri.
The best coaches are those who adapt to the rigours of the Premier League and change it up when they need to, tailoring to the opposition. Given that we’re not Manchester City and he’s not Pep Guardiola, if he just sits there rigidly refusing to change…
Alex: This was a bone of contention with Leicester fans. Guardiola has reinvented himself regularly with the systems and tactics at Manchester City. We didn’t see that from Maresca in that one season and he talks consistently about having a fixed way of playing. The modern football style, possession for possession’s sake, is boring, isn’t it…
Dave: Very.
Alex: You can understand why football teams do it, but it’s not going to get the pulse racing. Enzo is very much from that ‘retain possession and you control the game’ school. Playing on the counter, allowing basketball-type football, you lose that control. But when our lead at the top was whittling away with the team in a rut, and the fans were calling for him to mix it up in terms of the system or personnel, he didn’t. That concerned us.
In his defence, he didn’t have 25 players who could play the football he wanted. At Chelsea, he’ll probably have greater depth in quality. But my major concern is he has this vision and he doesn’t adapt. The Premier League is brutal. You can have a game plan and it’s up to the opposition to counter that…
Dave: And they do. By half-time, they’ve found you out. It happens within a game.
Alex: Exactly. Enzo, before a game, is very good at setting a team up to go into a game and doing X, Y and Z. His in-game management, though… a lot of managers out-thought him tactically within games. He needs to learn quickly. You have less leeway in the Premier League and there is an inexperience there.
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Dave: Do you think we have the players to play the system he wants?
Alex: He needs a goalkeeper who has elite distribution.
Dave: So we need a new goalkeeper, then.
Alex: I guarantee he’ll come in for Mads Hermansen from Leicester. He signed him from Brondby and, with the ball at his feet, he’s sensational. He’s got a ricket in him because of the risks he takes, but his distribution is phenomenal.
Dave: Can he actually save shots?
Alex: Yes. He’s not huge but as an all-round goalkeeper, he’s very, very good.
Hermansen has excelled under Maresca at Leicester (Plumb Images/Leicester City FC via Getty Images)
He’ll try to play an inverted full-back, and will want a left-footed defender who does not play as a conventional full-back but can operate as a left-sided centre-half but will also venture into midfield. So Marc Cucurella or Levi Colwill. Ben Chilwell’s days will be numbered.
He’ll have a defensive midfielder; not necessarily a destroyer, but someone who sits deep. That was Harry Winks for Leicester — he had no business playing at Championship level and found it very comfortable. He deployed two advanced central midfielders, ‘No 8s’, who would advance up-field and look to score goals. One of those was Wilfred Ndidi; watching Enzo turn him into an attacking midfielder was mind-bending.
The key positions are the wingers. He’ll rub his hands together to have Cole Palmer, whom he worked with at Manchester City’s under-21s. His wingers need to be very good in one-versus-one situations, but also defensively. They get through a hell of a lot of work.
Dave: Noni Madueke has a lot of potential and can probably fulfil that kind of role, but Palmer is way more than just a winger. I don’t want to see him haring back to perform last-ditch tackles. I want to see him creating and scoring goals. If Maresca could improve Mykhailo Mudryk, that would be massively impressive.
Alex: He rebuilds players’ confidence. Mudryk will benefit from him. I would not be surprised to see him get Raheem Sterling firing again, too. On the one hand, he’s very, very good with young players and will dip into the academy if he thinks there’s a player there. At the other extreme, he revitalised others at Leicester who were on the scrap heap. Jannik Vestergaard was ridiculed, but he revived him.
Up front, he’ll only ever play one striker — even when chasing a game. He needs a player who holds the ball up to feed the advancing No 8s and wingers. He also needs someone to press well. We didn’t have that ideal striker. He’ll need to get that position sorted at Chelsea.
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Dave: Everyone seems to presume that Conor Gallagher will be sold, but he gives the side energy — that rather old-fashioned thing of putting in the hard yards, tackling and doing the dirty work, allowing the more talented players to create. He can lead the press. What will Maresca make of him?
Alex: He’ll look at Gallagher in the way he looked at Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, an academy graduate whom he turned him into our key player. He’d look at Gallagher as one of the No 8s and ask him to do the same as Dewsbury-Hall in the Championship; score and create goals. He will get him into the pockets of space and will like his aggression.
Ndidi was used as an attacking midfielder but we still leant on his defensive abilities to win the ball back. We would press and create changes by forcing turnovers close to their goal. Gallagher can do that. He’ll probably look to have someone like that alongside a Palmer centrally: one doing the ball-winning and getting into the box to score and assist, the other finding the space to influence things.
Dave: With Jose Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti and Tuchel, we loved them because they ‘got’ the supporters and the club. Will Enzo be that kind of guy, or will he be more aloof? One of the problems Pochettino had, aside from the Tottenham thing, was that he never really acknowledged the supporters. There was no connection there at all. And it’s important.
Alex: I can alleviate your concerns in that regard. Enzo is very diligent on building a relationship with the fans. At Leicester, he engaged. He’d go up to the Union FS, our singing section, after every game and demand all his players clapped them, too, at the end of the match. As a result, the fans felt he ‘got’ us. You’ll get that with him.
Dave: We love an Italian manager at Chelsea. If he bothers to find out about our Italian heritage, our players and managers, he will do very well.
Alex: He will be watching hours and hours of footage as we speak. Before he joined us, he watched every single Leicester game from the previous few years to understand what we were about. He lived at our training ground for months. He would immerse himself in the club, learning everything. He’ll do the same, I’m sure. It won’t be lost on him, the Italian connection.
Where it went slightly awry, our fanbase were a little bit frustrated with some of the football at times. Not necessarily because it was boring football, but we were the Manchester City of the Championship. Teams would come and play a low block against us. The atmosphere could be quite flat. There was no jeopardy in the games, and that built up frustration. He called out our fans and said: ‘If you don’t value me, I’ll be off. The moment I feel I’ve not got the support of the fanbase, I’ll leave’. So he will engage with the fans, but he’s also a touchy so-and-so.
Dave: I don’t mind that. Let’s hope he’s a little bit more Antonio Conte than Sarri. Conte fired us up, but he was fiery.
But the key to Chelsea at the moment is keeping co-sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart happy, a concept I find utterly bewildering. Don’t put their noses out of joint. Will he upset the apple cart there?
Alex: So, the thing that our fanbase was most impressed with about Enzo Maresca was the fact he challenged our board and hierarchy more than any other manager ever has. He’s possibly come closest to any other manager to maybe getting some changes.
We have financial problems looming over us, and nobody seemingly pays the price for that other than the managers. So why aren’t our owners making changes at that director of football/CEO level? Maresca was trying to make us an elite team on the field and wanted Leicester to become an elite club off it, too. To do that, they needed to make changes board level.
He may see that ‘elite structure’ at Chelsea and keep schtum. But if there is an issue, he will reference it. It’s not a ticking time bomb, but if that’s a major problem, it will be exposed.
Dave: So new manager by Christmas, then…
Alex: Ha. Or, if he hits the ground running like he did at Leicester, you may well go on and win the league. You never know.
