For Enzo Maresca, there is a difference. Does he worry? Of course, he does. He is the manager of Chelsea and it tends to come with the territory. Does he doubt himself? Absolutely not.
When Maresca was appointed six months ago, 44 years old and with little managerial experience, the reaction was predictable. It will not work. He will not work. Not at Chelsea. Not with these owners and this enormous squad. Maresca saw it differently, partly because of these owners and this enormous squad, in which the talent runs so deep. But mainly because of his self-belief.
“Doubt myself? For sure, no,” Maresca said, as he prepared for Wednesday night’s Premier League trip to Southampton. “The only thing I can say is that all Premier League managers … Take, I don’t know, Eddie Howe. When he started, he had experience? No. Pep [Guardiola], when he started at Barcelona. Experience? No. Mikel [Arteta], when he started at Arsenal? No. When you start as a journalist. Experience? No.
“We all are in the same situation. When you start, you don’t have experience. You cannot go to the supermarket and buy experience. So you need time. But it’s not only for me, it’s for all of us in different jobs.
“In terms of doubting myself? No. When we finish some games and you ask me: ‘Are you worried about this or that?’ I am always worried because I try always until the end to do the right things. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in what I do.”
Maresca regarded the options in the Chelsea squad he inherited as a blessing not a curse. “I still think what I said to the owners and the sporting directors the first time I met them: because of the age [profiles of the players], because of how good the squad is … for me, Chelsea, in the next five to 10 years will be one of the teams or the team that is going to dominate English football.
“This is what I said to the club the first time I met them. No matter who will be the manager, for the next five or 10 years, because of the age and the squad, you can dominate English football. And I still think exactly the same.”
Maresca has managed the squad expertly, making clever rotations. Better still, he has the team playing with a discernible identity. And even better, he has got results. The signs were there in how Chelsea finished last season under Mauricio Pochettino: nine league wins in 15 with five draws. But nobody expected Chelsea to be third at this stage, with an identical record to that of second-placed Arsenal – not even Maresca, who has said the team are ahead of schedule.
It has led to talk of a title challenge, albeit not from Maresca and not only because Liverpool are nine points clear at the top; something of a blast from the past. Remember February 2014 when the then Chelsea manager José Mourinho described his team as a “little horse” in the fight for the trophy with Manchester City and Liverpool – one that “needs milk and needs to learn how to jump”.
Maresca was asked what size horse his Chelsea were, which led to a shoulder drop and an answer about how he was a dog lover. He has had one or two golden retrievers for the past 20 years; he currently has one, a three-year-old called Ciro. Would he describe his team as a puppy, then?
“No,” Maresca replied. “I think we showed we are there and we are competing very well in all the competitions. So this shows how mature they are in this moment.”
Still, Maresca was not about to raise expectations about what Chelsea might do this season. To him, Arsenal are contenders because they went close last season and the one before that. Chelsea are not because they have not done similar.
Maresca talked about how “the moment we lose games, there will be doubts – I know how it works”. He said: “It’s difficult to continue the whole season in the way we are now. For sure, a different moment will come and we need to manage that and deal with that.”
It would not be hard to imagine the reaction were Chelsea to lose against bottom-of-the-table Southampton. Maresca called it his team’s toughest game of the season because he knows that Southampton have played well at times and been unlucky but, really, because he wanted to concentrate the minds of his players.
“The first thing I said in the dressing room on Sunday after we beat Aston Villa was not congratulations or well done, it was prepare for Wednesday,” Maresca said.
When Mourinho delivered his memorable “little horse” assessment, he added that “maybe next season we can race”. And so they did. After finishing third, his team romped to the title in 2014-15. It is certainly a path for Maresca to follow. For now, he is content that Chelsea are moving in a positive direction.
