When Enzo Maresca took over at Leicester last summer, he made a small but symbolic change to the club’s training ground – to honour Claudio Ranieri.
As the players arrived at the entrance to Seagrave’s home grounds, they were greeted by pictures on the wall from Leicester’s FA Cup and Community Shield triumphs in 2021, but not their miraculous Premier League triumph in 2016. Maresca decided to display those achievements alongside Ranieri’s title-winning photos on the wall.
The move came as no great surprise given that the Italian was one of the first people Ranieri contacted when he took over as Foxes manager last year, but another call may be necessary if Maresca were to move to Ranieri’s former club Chelsea.
Maresca has made fewer than 70 senior appearances, 53 in England and zero in the Premier League, but has agreed a five-year contract to succeed Mauricio Pochettino at Stamford Bridge. Nevertheless, he arrives with high expectations.
The 44-year-old takes up the role in circumstances similar to those when Ranieri took over in 2000, when he was required to play in the Champions League.
The Blues’ failure to finish in the top four was the main reason for Pochettino’s sudden departure from Stamford Bridge, with Chelsea’s owners watching last month’s Champions League semi-final and wondering why such a stage had seemed so far out of the club’s reach.
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The Independent’s Miguel Delaney and ESPN’s Mark Ogden discuss Chelsea’s approach to signing Maresca as a replacement for Mauricio Pochettino.
But despite his relative inexperience, Chelsea simply view Maresca as a manager capable of leading the team into Europe’s top club competition and they want an attractive style of football based on possession and control of the ball.
His love for and study of Pep Guardiola’s philosophies has had a major influence on the team’s thinking, and a Manchester City-esque style of play is what Maresca brought to Leicester during his year at the King Power.
The same patient play that has led Guardiola’s Leicester to rank last in the Premier League in forward passing percentage every year took hold almost overnight. In the Championship, only Southampton had a lower passing rate than Leicester did last season.
“Maresca is deeply rooted in Guardiola’s style of play and if he can successfully implement that style he’s always going to attract attention, and that’s what he’s done at Leicester,” says Leicester correspondent Jordan Blackwell. Leicester MercurySaid Sky Sports.
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Sky Sports’ Sam Blitz and Simeon Goram look at what Maresca and Ipswich’s Kieran McKenna, who is currently on a new contract, can bring to the Premier League and why they are so in demand.
“The signing of Maresca felt like an unconventional move by the club. He is a man of great tactical knowledge and is admired for his insight. As well as working as Pep’s assistant he has also worked as coach for Manchester City Under-21 and West Ham’s first team.”
The similarities between Pep Ball and the man known as ‘The Marescalator’ are striking: Leicester, for example, have utilised the inverted full-back effectively under the Italian manager this season.
Ricardo Pereira, the fiery right-back that Premier League crowds will remember from two years ago, thrived in the centre of the pitch during Maresca’s season at Leicester.
But Maresca has gone a step further when it comes to the full-backs: if the Italian wants to switch left-backs, Pereira simply swaps them on the opposite flank with the opposing defender, leaving opponents guessing as to what shape Leicester will play.
A good example was Pereira’s transfer during the 4-1 win over Huddersfield, in which the Portuguese full-back recorded a goal and an assist.
The tactical tweak could suit Chelsea, who deployed Marc Cucurella at inverted full-back towards the end of the season, with the Spaniard’s position adjusted at half-time against Aston Villa in April and the Blues winning every game since.
Building up from the back has been another key feature of both Guardiola and Maresca’s play, and one of the Italian’s first signings was goalkeeper Mads Hermansen, who not only developed into one of the Championship’s top shot-stoppers but also excelled with his feet.
Maresca allowed Hermansen to push forward in front of goal to add another man to the build-up, forming a back two with Jannik Vestegaard, and the move was capped off by Kieran Dewsbury-Hall’s final touch at the other end of the pitch, as the Leicester midfielder finished the Championship season with 12 goals and four assists.
It is yet to be revealed who Chelsea’s main creator will be under Maresca but it could be Cole Palmer, the Italian who oversaw Maresca’s development from young prospect to first-team player as Manchester City’s elite development squad manager.
Elsewhere in the backline, Maresca has played alongside Guardiola and another of his protégés, Mikel Arteta, in using wingers who fall into the ‘one-on-one explorer’ category.
Stephi Mavididi and Abdul Fataw had the most one-on-one duels in the Championship last season, a category that has been dominated by the likes of Jeremy Doku, Jack Grealish, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli in the Premier League in recent years.
Maresca, like Guardiola, is committed to his style; he lives or dies by it. Ultimately, it has been successful, but it is also why there are still critics in the stands at the King Power, despite leading the team to a Championship title.
The Foxes went 10 points clear at the top of the table after beating Swansea 3-1 in January but the victory was overshadowed by harsh post-match comments from Italian Maresca, who was unhappy with what he felt was a lack of support from the stands.
“Maybe some people think it’s easy to win games, but it’s not easy,” he said. “I can see that fans are frustrated, maybe some people take things for granted, but this is not the case.”
“I came to this club to implement this idea. The moment that idea begins to have doubts I will be gone the next day. That is clear, there is no doubt about it.”
Perhaps rising expectations were inevitable – or perhaps the lack of danger combined with the style of play simply encouraged a degree of complacency – Leicester had won 22 of their 29 league games at the time of his comments.
But the lack of a Plan B grew, particularly as they managed just 10 points from consecutive games between mid-February and April, leading to further resentment across the club.
“Fans thought that eight months into the season already, clubs would have learnt Leicester’s style of play and how to stop it, but Maresca had done nothing to overcome it,” Blackwell said.
“They kept playing the same way, but that’s him. He’s decided what’s the best way to play, what’s the most successful way to play, and he’s not going to change that.”
“He says he has a Plan B, but Pereira doesn’t play as a midfielder, he plays as a No. 10 when he moves into midfield.”
This is not to dismiss Maresca’s methods: Harry Winks, who worked under Pochettino, Antonio Conte and Jose Mourinho, calls Maresca the best manager he has ever played for.
“The Leicester players said they felt a bit like idiots when he arrived. He was teaching them things they had never thought about or considered, a totally different way of thinking about the game,” Blackwell added.
Harry Winks has started all but one of Leicester’s league games under Maresca.
It took a few months for his new team to fully understand the consistency and relentless demands of his style of play, but his methods were clear and ingrained in the first pre-season friendly against Peterborough in early July.
Given those demands, Maresca got his message across effectively, with Winks himself pointing to another win against Swansea – Leicester’s 11th victory in 12 league games this season – as the moment things really started to click.
Despite going down 1-0 in South Wales, the Foxes stuck to their style, refused to be rushed and tired the hosts before sealing a comfortable victory.
That determination – sometimes bordering on stubbornness – is unlikely to change at Stamford Bridge, but Maresca’s public image may need to change if he is to outlast his predecessors under Todd Boley.
On the same night that Leicester won the Championship title, he used his position of strength to announce that he wanted to sit down with Leicester’s owners to discuss what he “didn’t like” about the season.
Now that the season is over, I need to sit down with the club and, unfortunately, clarify what I didn’t like this year.
The Foxes’ precarious financial situation is mitigated by the number of wealthy players on the squad, but communication problems with higher-ups have plagued the Italian manager all season.
Things came to a head when Stefano Sensi’s move from Inter Milan was cancelled at the literal last minute on January transfer deadline day, without Sensi being told the extent of the issues that had led the Premier League to bring an FFP complaint against Leicester, or the points deduction the club could face next season.
“If Chelsea are looking for a yes man, he’s not that guy,” Blackwell said. “He will say things in the media that the club keeps secret.”
“Some clubs will be nauseated if you have a manager who is openly playing power games in the media. It doesn’t seem to be in line with what Chelsea want, but he is a pure manager.”
“He was quick to say he doesn’t want more powers. He’s happy with his job of organising the team tactically on the training ground. He just wants to know what’s going on.”
One of the requirements set out by the Chelsea board for the new manager was the ability to “compete with Guardiola and Arteta”.
The big question is whether Maresca can lead the Blues to those heights, but if Boly is looking for a protégé to honour his two highly-respected players, he has found one in the Italian.
