Soccer

Enzo Maresca appointed Chelsea manager on five-year deal

Italian joins from Leicester after winning promotion

Chelsea have appointed Maresca on a five-year deal. Photograph: Mike Egerton/PA Wire
Chelsea have appointed Maresca on a five-year deal. Photograph: Mike Egerton/PA Wire
David Hytner
Mon Jun 03 2024 - 15:33

Chelsea have confirmed the appointment of Enzo Maresca on a five-year contract, the new manager having accepted the challenge of returning the club to the Champions League as a bare minimum. Maresca (44) led Leicester to the Championship title over this past season – his only full campaign as a head coach – and he succeeds Mauricio Pochettino, who left Chelsea by mutual consent two weeks ago.

Maresca becomes the fifth manager in the two-year Chelsea ownership of Behdad Eghbali and Todd Boehly, after Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter, Frank Lampard and Pochettino. The list does not include Bruno Saltor, who took interim charge for one game in April 2023 after Potter’s departure.

The length of Maresca’s contract – which has a club option of a further year – is significant; Pochettino was given only two years and it is part of the owners’ desire to go in a different direction. The season under Pochettino ended with five straight Premier League wins, a sixth-placed finish and Uefa Conference League qualification, which was an improvement on 12th place from 2022-23. Yet turbulence was rarely far away, the feeling that Pochettino was an imperfect fit for the owners hard to ignore. Many of the players were unhappy to see Pochettino go.

Maresca, who officially starts on July 1st, has bought into his role in the club’s structure. Whereas Pochettino sought greater power, including over recruitment, Maresca is happy to concentrate on coaching and seeking to fulfil the owners’ ambitions, which they outlined in the programme for the season’s final game against Bournemouth.

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A message talked about a need to be “consistently winning or contending for the Premier League” and “consistently playing in the Champions League”. Chelsea will play in the revamped Club World Cup in the summer of 2025, having qualified as the 2021 Champions League winners.

“To join Chelsea, one of the biggest clubs in the world, is a dream for any coach. It is why I am so excited by this opportunity,” Maresca said. “I look forward to working with a very talented group of players and staff to develop a team that continues the club’s tradition of success and makes our fans proud.”

Maresca counts Pep Guardiola among his influences, having worked under him at Manchester City, initially as the club’s elite development squad manager in 2020-21 when he won the Premier League 2 title by 14 points. After a short-lived stint as the manager of Parma the following season – he won four and lost four of 13 Serie B matches – he returned to City in the summer of 2022 as Guardiola’s assistant and helped them to treble-winning glory.

In a parallel with the Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta – another former Guardiola assistant at City – it is possible to see similarities in terms of playing style between Maresca and Guardiola. Maresca is obsessed by patient possession and positional play, his go-to system is 4-3-3 and the Chelsea hierarchy are convinced his approach will suit the technically gifted squad.

Maresca left his native Italy at 18 to sign for West Brom at the start of his playing career, earning a move to Juventus, where he would work under Carlo Ancelotti and Marcello Lippi, and play alongside Antonio Conte among many other stars. Early in his coaching career, Maresca was the assistant to Manuel Pellegrini at West Ham. Guardiola is hardly his only influence.

Maresca went to Leicester in the summer of last year, living at the training ground for the first two months to get a feel for the job, which was to rejuvenate a club on its knees after the shock relegation from the Premier League. He was charged with getting them straight back up – nothing else. It did not matter that James Maddison, Harvey Barnes and Youri Tielemans had left. Maresca delivered. – Guardian