What do we know about Enzo Maresca the manager? Chelsea take on Manchester City in Premier League opener

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Appointed on 5 year deal 

The footballing world was left pretty shocked when Mauricio Pochettino’s departure from Chelsea was announced back in June. It came after the Blues won all of their final five Premier League games, and only the top three clubs had a better 2024 in the division. After all sorts of rumours as to who Todd Boehly and the Chelsea hierarchy would turn to as the next manager, the club confirmed their new man would be Leicester City boss Enzo Maresca. It’s not been the easiest of starts for the Italian. A tumultuous pre-season, in which they lost 4-1 both to Celtic and Manchester City, has been combined with another strange transfer window of lots more spending and lots more incomings. When perhaps a clear-out seemed the more obvious strategy. The club currently has 44 first team players.

Now the Premier League has rolled around, and starts don’t get much tougher for the Italian. He will lock horns with the man he used to be assistant manager to in Pep Guardiola, as Man City go to Stamford Bridge on Sunday. So how well-equipped is Marsesca to try and rebuild Chelsea after two seasons outside the top five? And can he manage such a bloated squad? The Italian won the Championship in his first season as a senior manager in England with the Foxes last season, getting 97 points and sending Leicester straight back to the Premier League. However, his rigid style of play did come under scrutiny at times, and Leicester did boast the most valuable squad in the division. Maresca’s journey  has been a slightly unusual one since his playing days, and heading to Chelsea certainly marks a meteoric rise. Here at Transfermarkt, ahead of the new season, with the help of our expertise from Italy, we bring you more on Maresca’s journey in management so far and whether that could lead to him being a success at Stamford Bridge.

Pep Guardiola’s influence in management continues

Pep Guardiola is widely thought of as the best manager in football. Many feel the Spaniard is the best ever. And his influence on the game doesn’t end with his own teams. Right now there are a number of managers in top jobs around Europe who all have one thing in common – they have worked with Guardiola. Mikel Arteta at Arsenal, Xabi Alonso at Bayer Leverkusen, departed Barcelona manager Xavi, new Bayern Munich boss Vincent Kompany, even Erik ten Hag of Manchester United, and now Maresca at Chelsea. All of those bosses worked with Guardiola either as a coach or towards the end of their playing careers. 

After being assistant manager to Manuel Pellegrini at West Ham, Maresca was given the Man City U23 job in August 2020, and had great success with the young Sky Blues. Working closely with Guardiola, Maresca led the team to the Premier League 2 title, and managed the likes of Oscar Bobb, Roméo Lavia, and Cole Palmer as they developed closer to the first team. Palmer scored 13 in 16 for Man City U23’s with Maresca in charge. Maresca will be hoping to get a tune out of the Chelsea playmaker again this season. After a disastrous and short managerial job with Parma in Serie B, Maresca returned to Man City – this time as Guardiola’s assistant for the 2022/23 treble winning season. Not a bad campaign to have your CV associated with.

Enzo Maresca’s failure as Parma manager

Marius Soyke is a content manager for Transfermarkt based in Germany, but is a huge Parma fan and remembers Maresca’s time in Italy well: “Maresca’s appointment was actually celebrated in Parma with a great deal of excitement. They wanted a ‘project coach’ who could build a young team and teach them an attractive style of play.” At the time Maresca was just 41 years old and seen as a coach for the future, but Soyke explains there was still lots of pressure at Parma, “There was also the ambition to return directly to Serie A, with many new players signed to try and achieve this. In addition to talents such as Adrián Bernabé, who Maresca knew from Man City, or Ange-Yoan Bonny, there were also experienced warriors such as Franco Vázquez and, above all, Gianluigi Buffon.”

Maresca won just four of his 14 matches in charge at Parma, losing five and registering a points per game average of only 1.21ppg. Soyke reveals some of the reasons why it didn’t work out for the Italian, “I think everyone involved in the appointment has failed a little because of the reality of Serie B. As in many second leagues, success there is not just down to a good tactical idea – the attitude and willingness to take on the fight are extremely important. Maresca later complained that the squad had been thrown together too ‘wildly’ with too many new players and was too international – I think he ultimately lacked the time to mould this team into a unit.” Maresca could face a similar issue at Chelsea with a bloated highly international squad.

Of course a good manager can just not be right for a particular job and maybe that was just the case at Parma with Maresca. Soyke continues, “Parma’s club owner, US investor Kyle Krause had only arrived a year earlier, and also had little experience at the time and thought that smart decisions and a good squad on paper would get them through easily. That ultimately failed two years in a row. I would doubt whether it was just Maresca’s fault in the first year. However, until he was sacked, there was very little to be seen of his playing ideas; most games during this time were decided by individual class rather than a good tactical set up.”

Effective but still criticised: Leicester’s title winning campaign under Maresca

Following Leicester’s surprise relegation from the Premier League in the 2022/23 season under Brendan Rodgers and then Dean Smith, the Foxes turned to Maresca to try and get them back to the English top-flight. Leicester boasted the highest squad value in the Championship, even more than the three promoted teams that had replaced them in the Premier League (Burnley, Sheffield United & Luton), and were expected to go straight back up. But no one could have foreseen the truly electric start they made under Maresca. They won 13 of their first 14 league games – the ‘Marescalator’ was up and running.

By Christmas it looked like Leicester were going to smash the league, and could even record the Championship’s record points total, but things took a slight turn for the worse in the last few months of the season. After being 12 points clear at the summit, and holding a 14-point cushion to third place, Leicester actually dropped to third place in mid March. Suddenly Maresca’s rigid fairly defensive tactics were coming under some scrutiny from sections of the fanbase. Nevertheless the Foxes finished the season strongly and managed to win the title and gain promotion with a game to spare.

Maresca’s team finished with best defensive record in the division, conceding just 41 goals in 46 games. Usually adopting a 4-3-3 system, Leicester were defensively solid, with a possession based style, but did also move the ball very quickly and decisively when in transition. According to Fbref, only Southampton had a higher average possession (65.5%) in the Championship this season than Leicester (61.6%). These traits may have caught the eye of the Chelsea decision makers, with the Blues squad full of technically gifted players, but it does seem from his brief history in football management, that Marsesca will need to be given time and patience to succeed in West London. Something the club hasn’t often given in recent decades. The five year contract seems ambitious for a club who have had an average tenure of just 408 days in charge from their last five managers.