Adrian Kajumba profiles Chelsea's new head coach Enzo Maresca, looking at the Italian's coaching journey, preferred tactics and personality.
In the north Italian city of Monza this week, almost 900 miles away from King Power Stadium, a teenager was spotted wearing this season’s Leicester City shirt as they passed through the train station.
Claudio Ranieri, mastermind of the club's odds-defying, fairytale 2015/16 Premier League title is a big reason why Leicester have captured the imagination a long way from home, in a country not short of its own powerhouses.
And the achievements of another Italian, Maresca, in leading them to the Championship title this season have only added to the interest in Leicester in Italy.
The admiration for his work has come from other clubs too, with Chelsea now making their move for the man who likens football to chess, appointing him as their head coach.
Restoring the Italian connection
Of course, there is a strong Italian heritage at Maresca's new club as well as his old team Leicester.
He will be the seventh Italian to manage at Stamford Bridge. Five of them won silverware - Gianluca Vialli, Carlo Ancelotti, Roberto Di Matteo, Antonio Conte and Maurizio Sarri.
Time will tell if Maresca can be a similar success. But he arrives at Chelsea with a resurfaced, ringing endorsement from arguably the best reference a manager could ask for.
It was given in 2021 but now has even greater significance, given that the man Maresca was being compared to has since transformed Arsenal into title challengers.
Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola said about Maresca when he was coaching his club’s Under-21s: “We are delighted with what Enzo Maresca has done with the EDS (Elite Development Squad).
“He showed he will become an extraordinary manager in the future. I feel it. Like I felt it when I saw Mikel Arteta, it is the same with Enzo.”
Maresca the player
Going back through Maresca’s football career, one recurring theme is Premier League managers past and present cropping up along the way - long before he got to work with one of his ultimate inspirations, Guardiola.
Maresca, an all-round midfielder as a player, started out in AC Milan’s academy aged 11 in 1991 and became good friends with Roberto De Zerbi.
He was subsequently one of the first people De Zerbi called when he was swotting up on the Premier League ahead of becoming Brighton & Hove Albion’s head coach in 2022.
Maresca’s first 18 months in senior football were spent at West Bromwich Albion, where the former Brighton and Chelsea head coach Graham Potter was a team-mate, with whom he shared lifts to training.
His West Brom form earned him a dream move to Juventus in January 2000, where he worked under Ancelotti before winning a Serie A title in 2002.
A 2005 switch to Sevilla then saw Maresca signed by Juande Ramos, whose next managerial stop was at Tottenham Hotspur.
While there, Maresca was part of the team that kickstarted Sevilla’s dominance of the UEFA Cup/Europa League.
Maresca helped the club win the 2006 and 2007 competitions, scoring twice in the first triumph - a 4-0 win over Middlesbrough - before donating his €10,000 Man of the Match prize money to a local hospital, an example of his indelible connection to the city.
His wife is from Seville, where their first son, one of four children, was also born.
Maresca also has a more poignant reminder of his Seville years - a tattoo in honour of Antonio Puerta, the team-mate he sat next to in the dressing room who died after a cardiac arrest on the pitch in 2007. He later wore Puerta's old shirt number, No 16, as a tribute.
It was also while he was in Spain that Maresca the manager started to be shaped - firstly via his battles against Guardiola’s Barcelona, whose style of play was one he fell in love with and has influenced his own, and secondly by his Malaga boss Manuel Pellegrini, who went on to manage Man City and West Ham United.
Maresca said: “Manuel is, for me, like a father. One day, during a chat with him, he said to me, ‘You have to try to become a coach because I think you think you can become a good coach.’
“From that day onwards I started to think that maybe I did have a future as a coach.”
Maresca the manager
He may have needed a nudge in the right direction but Maresca has appeared to be a coaching natural.
Those who have worked with him describe Maresca as a compelling character constantly pushing for individual and collective improvement, a man who is most in his element when talking tactics.
The aim of his Guardiola-inspired, possession-based strategy is maximum control of a game, and it is one he single-mindedly refuses to deviate from.
As an example, at half-time of Leicester's April win against Birmingham City, he warned his goalkeeper Mads Hermansen that he would be subbed off if he lost his nerve and started to go long after making a mistake which led to a goal while playing out from the back, as Maresca demands.
Maresca’s philosophy is not only distinctive but also detailed. After all, this is someone who produced a thesis called “Football and Chess” when studying for his badges at Italy’s coaching centre Coverciano.
“If a piece is moved in chess, how can you adjust? If the opponent is trying to do something, as a football manager you adjust,” he explained.
“These kinds of things, for me, are very similar. For a coach, it’s important to have the mentality of a chess player: develop a plan, study counter-moves, choose the arrangement of the pieces.”
Gaining experience
Maresca put his theories into practice in coaching roles at Ascoli, Sevilla and West Ham under Pellegrini, while studying Guardiola’s methods in his free time after leaving London Stadium.
Then while in charge of Man City’s EDS squad he worked with the likes of current Chelsea players Cole Palmer and Romeo Lavia, and won the club's first Premier League 2 title in 2021.
An unsuccessful 14-match spell at Parma followed before he returned to Man City as Guardiola’s assistant for their Treble-winning season of 2022/23. However, Maresca admitted: “I was always clear I wanted to be a manager.”
Leicester gave him that opportunity. And he now has another at Chelsea, along with the chance to emulate previous Italian success at Stamford Bridge.
