Although he hasn’t put pen to paper at Stamford Bridge as of yet, it appears to be only a matter of time before Enzo Maresca is officially unveiled as the new manager of Chelsea Football Club.
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Having only just got Leicester City promoted from the Championship as title winners, the Italian has decided to seek his fortune in West London.
Whilst one can understand his ambition, the Blues have been a club very much in transition over the past few seasons, and it’s believed that one of the reasons that Mauricio Pochettino left – or was moved on, depending on how you read a ‘mutual consent’ announcement – was because the club hierarchy are intent on selling captain, Conor Gallagher.
The reality of working under Todd Boehly might well come as a culture shock to Maresca, who will have to get used to being dictated to from above, and it’s an expected appointment that has certainly raised a few eyebrows, not least with Stan Collymore.
Maresca is an underwhelming appointment says Collymore
“Enzo Maresca worked with the Man City development squad before going to Parma and then onto Leicester, and with the greatest respect to Parma and Leicester, it’s a very, very, very different beast to Chelsea,” he said to CaughtOffside for his exclusive column.
“He knows England – let’s not forget as a player he actually started his professional career at West Bromwich Albion – and he’s played at Sevilla, Fiorentina, Bologna, Juventus, Malaga, Sampdoria and Olympiacos, so he’s got a really good CV, but Chelsea is a beast that will eat great managers up.
“It ate Mourinho up twice, Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter, Frank Lampard…
“Although there are some seasoned winners in that Chelsea dressing room, it’s very much a young squad, and that’s what Todd Boehly will be hoping to tap into. That there isn’t a John Terry or a Didier Drogba to question things, but a group of young players that will marvel at Maresca’s work on the training pitch with all his Pep-type drills.
“Unfortunately for him, Chelsea had a poor season in the Premier League and it’s a results-based business. He’ll need to get wins on the board without, perhaps, some of his senior players because they’ll be sold as the club are close to falling foul of FFP despite selling hotels in London and doing all sorts of creative accounting.
“The Blues need to get lots of very good results very early if they want to get into Europe, and by that I mean the Europa League.
“I would be absolutely astounded if, when we get to Christmas, there aren’t rumblings about Maresca’s position already because it’s a young, fickle, rookie group.
“For me, it’s an underwhelming appointment, the club should have stuck with Poch, and I get the feeling that come November/December time, we’ll be having another conversation about Chelsea changing their manager again.”
It’s certainly a gamble from Boehly and the Chelsea board, in the sense that Maresca is unproven as a manager at the very highest levels of the game.
Were Collymore to be proved right and the Blues be looking for yet another manager in a few months time, it’s worth pondering on the fact that the job could become a real poisoned chalice that no manager worth their salt would want to take on.
Money will turn the heads of the majority of course, but if professional happiness is high up on the list of priorities, it would seem any Chelsea manager is only going to get that if they’re consistently winning games with a squad that’s being constantly rotated because of the club’s business elsewhere.