Chelsea were looking for someone innovative and fresh when they parted company with Mauricio Pochettino at the end of last season. They did not chase a big-name manager past his best. What they wanted was a coach on the up, with the vision to bring order to a talented but sprawling and inexperienced squad.
Enter Enzo Maresca: 44, humble, smart, obsessive about the smallest tactical details. Some might have shied away from the Chelsea job, seeing it as a graveyard for managerial aspirations given the fate of Pochettino, Graham Potter and Thomas Tuchel under the ownership of Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital, but the Italian saw opportunity after leading Leicester to the Championship title in his debut season. “I’m interested in the job because I see a squad that can win the Premier League one day,” Maresca said during talks with his potential new employers.
Not quite yet, of course. Chelsea have made a promising start under Maresca but nobody is getting carried away before Sunday’s trip to Manchester United. A title challenge is unrealistic. Chelsea, who are targeting a return to the Champions League after a two-year absence, are not the finished article. It is possible to have misgivings over those outside the first XI. Maresca made 11 changes against Newcastle in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday and saw the understudies fail to perform during a 2-0 defeat.
But this is a process and not the story of one man reviving a sinking ship. The bigger point is Maresca has fitted into Chelsea’s structure. He has collaborated with the sporting directors, Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart, and judging him solely on results is reductive. The more pertinent question is whether Maresca is improving his players, finding common ground with the recruitment team and working productively across a set-up implemented by Stewart and Winstanley. So far the answer is yes.
Maresca is low-maintenance. There is admiration for his eye for detail, his training regime, the hours he puts into studying video analysis of his own team and upcoming opponents. It is interesting that Maresca was seen as a dogmatic, systems-based manager at Leicester. Did he have a Plan B? He was criticised when Leicester’s results dipped during the run-in. Chelsea, however, were drawn to the way he controlled games, but they had to consider whether they were going for a one-trick pony. What if the football was too predictable?
Maresca’s flexibility has been a welcome surprise. This Chelsea team thrive on chaos, so it makes sense to tap it when victories will breed confidence. Maresca has the league’s best creative talent – Cole Palmer – and, in Nicolas Jackson, Pedro Neto and Noni Madueke, flying forwards who run amok given space.
Chelsea have not tumbled into passing for passing’s sake. Equally, it was striking to hear Maresca pine for more calm during last Sunday’s 2-1 win over Newcastle in the league; for him to say: “This is the kind of game [where] before you attack you need to make 15, 20 or 25 passes … against them if you do an up and down game, they destroy us.”
Maresca wants Chelsea to mature. His coaching is heavily detailed and it takes time for players to adapt. There will come a point when Chelsea have to find more control. They are not yet as solid or structured as Arsenal, Manchester City and Liverpool, although that may start to change now that the £106.8m midfielder Enzo Fernández has lost his place to the press-resistant, disciplined Roméo Lavia.
Physicality matters – Fernández has not adapted to the pace of English football – and Chelsea need to be less vulnerable in transition. They have kept two clean sheets in the league and teething problems are inevitable given their youth. They were well beaten by City in their opening game and although they looked a serious outfit against Liverpool last month, they left Anfield empty-handed after coming up short in both boxes. There have been defensive slips, not to mention issues with Maresca’s insistence on passing out from the back.
Yet the Newcastle league game also featured the pass of the season, Palmer delivering from deep to Neto, who raced clear and crossed for Jackson to score. What was this if not evidence of the beauty of vertical football?
The answer is that even Palmer requires tactical coherence. In the post-match analysis, those who hired Maresca talked about Chelsea confounding Newcastle’s press through subtle tweaks. The full-backs were swapped around, Malo Gusto moving right, Reece James on the left. James aided distribution by moving inside to hit passes with his right foot. Newcastle also struggled with a shift in Palmer’s position. He has often drifted to the right from his starting spot as a No 10, but Maresca moved him into an inside-left role. Palmer’s winning goal came down that channel.
Still, there is no overreaction. There has been much upheaval under Boehly and Clearlake. There have been bold calls and plenty of coming and going. It has required conviction and sound judgment for Chelsea to reach a point where they are beginning to look stable.
Maresca is operating within a developing framework. He has been given a set-piece coach, Bernardo Cueva, who is making his presence felt. Under a revamped medical department, overseen by Bryce Cavanagh, there is yet to be a repeat of last year’s debilitating injury record.
There is praise from within for Stewart and Winstanley. They took the controversial decision to move on from Pochettino after judging the campaign as a whole. They have had their critics but the sense is that Chelsea are getting more right than wrong now. Every manager depends on their players and Maresca has, in the words of one ally, inherited a “bloody good squad”. His challenge is to maintain the upward trajectory. He will benefit from the synchronised thinking behind the scenes.
