Hiring Maresca to be a cog in the wheel shows the hubris of these Chelsea owners. I can’t see him lasting two years
IT is a time, I am sure, of great celebration for Enzo Maresca. A time when he has been anointed Chelsea head coach, a time when all his brilliant work at Leicester City in the season just passed has been recognised and rewarded with a promotion to one of the biggest jobs in the game.
But it is hard to look at what lies ahead at Stamford Bridge without worrying for him. Not in a financial sense, of course. the five-year deal that has taken him and his small army of staff to west London should see him set for life. His career prospects, though, are very much in the balance.
Because coaching Chelsea, under the ownership of todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali, is as close to the Impossible Job as it gets in English football at the moment.
Getting the job is cause for celebration, sure, as long as you’re aware that it’s football’s version of being selected for human sacrifice.
It’s an honour, you get treated like a God for a little while, you get flattered and fattened up. then one of the two co-sporting directors says it’s your fault that you’re not making sense of the chaos and someone takes you out for dinner at a nice restaurant in Mayfair and turns your lights out.
Maybe a sense of foreboding was why it took some time for Maresca to put the finishing touches to the deal that made him the new Chelsea boss, although whether he is actually the boss is a moot point in itself.
the manager being the boss is rather an old-fashioned idea at Chelsea, it seems. Maresca has been selected as successor to Mauricio Pochettino partly because it is said he is happy to be part of a ‘collaborative structure’ at the club, a cog in a wheel.
A ‘collaborative structure’ is just business speak for telling Maresca he is not going to be in charge. A ‘collaborative structure’ is business speak for saying that the suits are going to be running the show.
the impression, certainly, is that it is very much Boehly and Eghbali who will call the shots, abetted by those co-sporting directors, Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart. Maresca is way down the food chain.
When one considers some of the other talents available, including strong characters such as former Chelsea boss thomas tuchel and ex-Brighton manager Roberto De Zerbi, it appears Maresca has been hired for his malleability as well as his coaching ability. Apart from that coaching ability, though, the way his appointment is being talked about makes it feel as if his No 1 quality is that he won’t rock the boat. Which seems an odd premise on which to try to make Chelsea a power in the game again.
then again, when you’ve got an owner such as Eghbali, who likes to pop into the dressing room now and again, and you’ve got a posse of people above you in the pecking order, knowing your place is going to be crucial.
It is hard to imagine Pochettino, De Zerbi or tuchel accepting such a subservient role, but maybe that just means Maresca is more suited to being a consensus politician at the club’s Cobham training ground.
As for the five-year contract, you’ll have to excuse me for being cynical about that, too. I’ve only got one hat and I’m rather fond of it, but I’ll eat it if Maresca sees out that five-year contract.
I’d be surprised if he makes it to two years. My best guess is that he’ll make it to the season after next. So maybe Chelsea’s owners are feeling excessively generous. Maybe they’re feeling excessively optimistic. Or maybe there’s a host of break clauses written into that contract.
Boehly and Eghbali have, after all, been through five permanent and interim managers since buying the club two years ago. When you get through that many marriages, you learn a few lessons, surely.
I hope Maresca succeeds. I hope he succeeds for his sake and the sake of Chelsea’s fans. But the reality is he is not remotely as well-qualified as his three full-time predecessors, tuchel, Graham Potter and Pochettino, to make sense of it all.
MARESCA’S frontline experience amounts to being fired after a season in Serie B with Parma, taking charge of Manchester City’s elite development squad, and a year in the Championship with Leicester, when the odds were hugely stacked in his favour because of the squad he inherited.
He has worked with Pep Guardiola, which counts for almost as much as fitting into a ‘collaborative structure’ these days. Managers are basking in the reflected glory of being Pep’s mate.
None of this is to say that Maresca is not a capable manager. His Leicester team played some fine football in the Championship and deserved to go up as champions. But is it really preparation for taking charge of a set-up like the current-day Chelsea?
the club has become the basket case of the Premier League, a byword for misplaced self-satisfaction and endless hubris, saddled with an ownership whose idea of a recruitment strategy has amounted to little more than a £1billion supermarket trolley dash.
At this point, it is worth saying that respected voices within the game, men such as Simon Jordan and Peterborough United owner Darragh MacAnthony, discern much that they admire in Chelsea’s new business model, and they are people who deserve to be listened to.
I’m still struggling to see it though. It took until the end of the season for Pochettino to start making sense of the proliferation of signings that were dumped on the club and so, naturally, it was at that point that Chelsea let him go.
Many reports claim the players are bewildered by Pochettino’s removal. Sometimes clubs thrive on churn, but it is hard to escape the conclusion that what Chelsea needed more than anything this summer was a break from constant upheaval. they were making progress at last. they needed some continuity. Instead, they have appointed someone new and emasculated him before he starts by naming him ‘head coach’, not ‘manager’. they are starting again.
Neutrals everywhere will wish Maresca good luck, secure in the knowledge that he is going to need it.