The positives Enzo Maresca brings to Chelsea... and why it's still a risk

He's got experience of winning in high performance environments... but its still a risk

So it looks like Enzo Maresca, Head Coach of Leicester City, is going to be the new Chelsea Head Coach. I’ve done literally hours and hours of research on him in the last few days, and barely slept. The end result is, I feel pretty positive about what he can achieve here.

Lots has been written about his tactical approach, his football philosophy and how that’s going to look here, so I thought I’d look at the other more practical positives that Enzo Maresca can bring to Chelsea.

I think the first thing its important to say, is he is the first head coach to come into Chelsea with a solid, established, modern football structure in place. Whatever you think of our sporting directors, they are now well established at the club. So is Joe Shields Co-Director of Recruitment and Talent.

Our new data and scouting departments are now well established too. Sam Jewell is in place as our Director of Global Recruitment and we’ve hired Bernardo Cueva from Brentford to oversee the development of our Set Piece Department.

On the player side, we’ve signed and developed the core of a new side for the long term. Mauricio Pochettino did a great job developing them last year, and laying foundations. There’s a good team spirit, good mentality and togetherness, and players have tangibly improved.

In the likes of Cole Palmer, Enzo Fernandez, Moises Caicedo, Christopher Nkunku, Reece James, Levi Colwill, Malo Gusto, Romeo Lavia, Nicolas Jackson, Benoit Badiashile and Carney Chukwuemeka, Djorde Petrovic & Wesley Fofana, as well as the likes of Andrey Santos, Kendry Paez and Estevao Willian who will all likely be part of our squad from 2025, and Alfie Gilchrist who broke through this year, there’s a core of talent to build around in the next few years. Even the likes of Mikhylo Mudryk and Noni Madueke have made a lot of progress this year and at least one if not both could be around next season.

I’ve deliberately left out Conor Gallagher and Trevoh Chalobah, as those upstairs will sadly sell them this summer - but in reality, they should be part of the future too. Not to mention Chelsea have been linked with the likes of Benjamin Sesko, one of Michael Olise/Eberechi Eze, and Tosin Adarabioyo this summer, all of whom would improve our squad, we’ve also been linked with a new GK and potential LB.

So the core structure is in place and a squad designed to play a specific type of football, and that’s why they’ve hired a head coach to come and fit into that. The foundations and structure are in place and stable, which they’ve not been for a long time. This will benefit him and the club.

The next thing to note is Enzo Maresca is a winner. He has learned from winners and top coaches, and won trophies as player and coach. As a player, he played under Carlo Ancelotti, Marcelo Lippi and Zico amongst others, winning Serie A, 2 Europa Leagues and a Spanish Cup. He then got to Manchester City and won PL 2 after years of underachievement by their U23 side.

Pep Guardiola then hand picked Maresca to be his assistant coach - and we know the standards Pep coaches at and demands from his players and coaches is ridiculously high. He won the treble with City as an assistant coach and was likely involved at some level with the tactical changes they made last year which helped them win those trophies. Finally, he went to Leicester City as Head Coach, and won the Championship with 97 points.

This isn’t a nice guy with no big club or trophy winning experience. He’s been around big clubs as a player and a coach and knows what’s expected, knows the demands and pressures that come with it, and yet had success and won trophies. He’s been in high performance, high pressure environments consistently and he’s thrived in those environments.

The pressures and expectations of Chelsea won’t be a shock to him, and he’ll want to win trophies - using his specific philosophy, for sure - but he’ll want to win and know what's expected.

The other positive is that Chelsea, finally, are truly committing to a specific football philosophy. The positional play, possession football, Pep Guardiola philosophy is clearly what the sporting directors are committing too. Under Roman Abramovich we hired managers with different philosophies and tactical set ups but never committed to it with our recruitment. We still managed to win trophies, but that was never sustainable.

One positive of us adopting this approach is we already have many players at the club who are a fit with this philosophy, but not only that, but a lot of our staff hires also come from those environments.

There’s a big Manchester City influence now at Chelsea. Joe Shields we know, then Stewart Thompson, former UK head of academy scouting for Man City, is now on our scouting team. Adding Enzo Maresca will give us 3 former Man City employees on our football staff, not to mention the likes of Cole Palmer and Romeo Lavia who are Man City academy graduates, who worked with Enzo. City’s football philosophy will be a key part of Chelsea going forward.

Then you add the likes of Paul Winstanley and Sam Jewell, key people at Brighton who had a similar footballing philosophy and worked with the likes of Roberto De Zerbi, you can see that right at the core of our football club, we have staff who are much more aligned in their football philosophy.

This, of course, will help with recruitment. When coach and scouts and sporting directors are all on the same page philosophically, you’re going to be much more in sync in terms of player profiling and the needs of the team. This will ensure more harmony between head coach and those above him, and in turn help us focus recruitment on players who fit this philosophy. One issue we’ve had at Chelsea for years is signing players for managers who have different styles and ending up with a mish mash of players who we have to adapt to a style they aren’t suited to. That will come to an end now.

People can’t really say there’s no plan anymore. The owners and directors have a clear strategy to build a team for the long term with the best young talent in the world, who can grow together and achieve success. They want that team to have a clear identity, philosophy and style, and a manager who can grow with the team, with a solid structure behind them. That’s what they are trying to build at Chelsea. Enzo Maresca’s appointment gives more clarity to a long term strategy.

However I want to be balanced, and although I’ve always maintained that, objectively speaking, the owners have done several good things for the club and have a great vision for Chelsea, it’s also clear they’ve also made huge, public mistakes and there’s still some major issues at the club they need to sort out. I’m not going to sit here and say it's all fun and roses with this appointment, or the club.

There’s a massive level of risk in Enzo Maresca’s appointment. It’s probably the riskiest managerial appointment in our recent history. The reality is, as much as it could go very well, it could also go very wrong.

If it does go pear shaped, the sporting directors will need to go, without any question. In my view they should already be under review, but if Maresca fails, accountability will definitely be needed and a big overall rethink required.

Not only this, as I’ve said many times, on a wider scale I still believe we need far better communication from the owners, some humility and acknowledgement of mistakes, and clarity of vision. Letters in the match-day programme are great and should be applauded, but at least one face to face interview focussed on Chelsea should have happened by now.

Next, with the greatest of respect, its’ important the ownership trust football experts to make football decisions. There was a suggestion in some quarters the other day certain individuals might overrule the Sporting Directors on the head coach decision. Regardless of my own view on the sporting directors, the owners should be trusting them, the football people, to make football decisions. Overruling them undermines their authority.

This is yet another reason why we still need, in my view, a football number one who can have the final say and is proven, elite, and respected in football. We also have to start doing more to keep the best Cobham players instead of selling them - Conor and Trev should not be sold - and finally, sign some proven talent with leadership qualities, not just under 25 players. These are areas I think the ownership/directors really need to address, and I’ll continue to say this.

However I can see the positives and opportunity we have in hiring Enzo Maresca, and I really believe he has the potential to be a huge success at Chelsea. If it works, it could be the beginning of a new successful era at Chelsea - if not, then big changes will be needed.

Whatever else they’ve done, you can’t accuse the owners of not being gutsy, because hiring Maresca is the biggest gamble they’ve taken so far. I hope for Chelsea’s sake, the gamble pays off.

The Score