Enzo Maresca and the ongoing debate – for both Chelsea and Leicester fans

The second instalment of the ‘Enzo Maresca derby’ this weekend brings two sets of fans together who have a lot more in common regarding the Chelsea head coach now than they did during the inaugural edition four months ago.

When Maresca went back to previous employers Leicester City for the first time with Chelsea on November 23, his popularity among the west London club’s following was well and truly on the rise. The 2-1 win secured against the team he was in charge of last season lifted Chelsea to third in the top-flight table and generally the mood towards the Italian among their supporters was overwhelmingly positive.

There has been a downturn in Chelsea’s results over the past three months, though, to divide opinion a lot more.

Maresca experienced similar at Leicester around this time last year, when they made hard work of instant promotion back from the Championship as a 12-point lead in the February slipped steadily through their fingers to become just a one-point gap when the music stopped in May.

The guy might feel a little hard done by. He did still take Leicester back up to the Premier League as champions, and Chelsea go into this weekend’s round of games in that division just two points off third place. They are also firm favourites to win the Conference League.

And yet Chelsea’s performance in a 2-1 away win against FC Copenhagen on Thursday in the first leg of a last-16 tie in UEFA’s third-tier competition earned more criticism than praise from their supporters — the kind of thing he had to put up with in the latter stages of 2023-24 while at Leicester.

So there is a possibility that many people in all four stands at Stamford Bridge will be rather united in their views when the teams play each other again on Sunday.

Talking to Iain Wright, a Leicester season-ticket holder of over 20 years, about last season it is like listening to the gripes Chelsea fans have raised during this one.

Wright tells The Athletic: “Where the frustration started to come in was that it almost felt like the other teams worked us out a little bit. They knew what we wanted to do was start slowly, keep the ball, maybe not press too much, almost wear teams out, and the result will come to us.

“What started to happen was that the teams would nick the ball, break on us and score. Then we looked a little bit lost. The games can sometimes happen to him (Maresca) rather than him affecting them. I think that was a real feature of that second part of the season.

“The anxiety started to build in the fanbase. I can remember one particular game, we were 1-0 down away at Bristol City last March. It’s injury time and we’re still passing the ball along the halfway line and you’re like, ‘Just get it near the goal!’.”

As The Athletic reads these quotes to some Chelsea fans in Copenhagen airport before their flight home on Friday, they nod and laugh in acknowledgement.

In Chelsea’s last home league game, against last-placed Southampton, the jeers and boos from their fans were audible as goalkeeper Filip Jorgensen and the defenders around him passed the ball sideways between each other when the score was still 0-0 (Marseca’s side did go on to record a 4-0 win).

Clayton Beerman, a Chelsea season-ticket holder of over 40 years, has not been impressed with what he’s seen from the new man so far: “Some of the football we’ve been watching over the last couple of months is as bad as (Maurizio) Sarri (Chelsea’s head coach in the 2018-19 season, when they finished third, albeit 27 points adrift of champions Manchester City, won the Europa League final and got to the Carabao Cup final) in terms of how slow it is, how turgid it is, and I just think that it’s not very enjoyable.”

Beerman has an ally in Jonathan Kydd, a Stamford Bridge season-ticket holder of 35 years.

“He’s got really electric players and I think he’s stifled them,” Kydd says of Maresca. “He’s trying to get them to play a particular way that I suspect is ‘Inept Pep (Guardiola, the Manchester City manager who the 45-year-old worked under before taking the Leicester job in May 2023)’, but it’s only succeeding in confusing them.

“It’s taking away their natural desire, their exuberance, and that’s one of the major problems I have with watching the team — this lack of energy. He’s managed to make Malo Gusto into an average player and he was top-banana last year. Maresca doesn’t want to play this up-and-down football. Well, if the players can’t play your system, mate, you’re screwed. It’s no good saying, ‘Well, we’ll keep on with my system’.

“I don’t think it’s an anti-philosophy thing. You need to be able to see what’s happening on the pitch. We’re not thick. We’ve been brought up the last 20 years seeing very good football, and when we see not-very-good football, we’re not saying we don’t like the philosophy, we’re saying do something to get it right.”

You can add Graham Barker, who has watched Chelsea home and away since 1986, to the list of detractors as far as the lack of entertainment is concerned.

“I don’t like this constant passing side-to-side,” he says. “I think he (Maresca) has gone backwards as the season has gone on, become more negative. By going sideways and then back again, it is his way of trying to control games, but safe football doesn’t win you games. You can stay in them for a while, but good sides only need one chance and then it is no good if you have had 68 per cent possession without creating anything.”

Not everyone is feeling downbeat about it, though. Tom Overend, a younger Chelsea fan than those quoted above at age 26, approves of what he is seeing and believes he is not the only one with that opinion: “I really like the way he has inducted a style of play. I also like how he has adapted to injuries — for example, playing Pedro Neto up top in Nicolas Jackson’s absence.

“His grasp of the tactical side of the game has been high quality and for a coach so new, he has managed to bring a sense of authority to the club. Some of his press conferences can be frustrating, but generally he has managed to come across as a figure of authority.

Chelsea’s players celebrating a goal against Southampton (Julian Finney/Getty Images)

“I think there is a variety of views among the fanbase. Some people see it as part of the club’s identity to fire the coach if we don’t achieve our goals over one season. Others have a different view, they want to give him time in a way other coaches haven’t had in the past. I am not alone in my view of him, I reckon there is a 50-50 split. But there is a feeling that if he gets us in the Champions League (for next season) he stays, if he doesn’t, he goes. I just think that is a bit of an ultimatum and Chelsea need to look beyond that these days.”

Maresca’s press conferences are definitely a cause for contention. His dismissal of Chelsea’s Premier League title chances came when they were second in the table before Christmas, and there have also been mixed messages over whether qualifying for next season’s Champions League is a target.

Kydd adds: “I began to doubt him when we were second and he said we’re not good enough (to compete for the title). You don’t hear the Bournemouth manager (Andoni Iraola) saying, ‘We’re not good enough’, when they’re fifth and winning. You go with it, you don’t make a negative statement. It doesn’t give you any confidence about him as a manager, I’m afraid.

“There was also his terrible statement when we went out of the FA Cup (losing 2-1 to Brighton in the fourth round last month), saying, ‘It’s given us an opportunity to concentrate on the league’. For me, it was a negation of everything that it means to be Chelsea. We’re a great cup side. The cups mean an enormous amount to the supporters, and to say that was crass beyond belief.”

Like Overend, Barker wants Maresca to be given time to succeed. However, he wants him to speak more like the confident managers the club have had in the past.

“There is a fine balance between talking yourself up and having egg on your face,” he concedes. “But you do have to come out as a Chelsea head coach and make it clear at the start of the season, ‘I want to win the league and if not, finish in the top four. I want to go a long way in the cups, in Europe. I want to win one of them, or at least go very close’. If you give negative vibes out to players, it is a ready-made excuse for them. They don’t have to put as much effort in, because the manager has kind of already said that it doesn’t matter if they lose this one.”

Despite some of the misgivings Wright had about what Maresca was doing at Leicester, he is genuinely sorry to see him in charge of Chelsea instead.

“I think people at Leicester took to Enzo straight away with that charisma and aura and that’s important in this modern age,” he says. “You do need that sort of personality and I think he definitely had that. Ultimately, the vast, vast majority of Leicester fans are sad that he did go and we didn’t get to see what he could have offered, and what we could have done, in the Premier League.”

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This ability to connect with fans is seen as one of Maresca’s strong points at Chelsea too. The other permanent hires made by the club’s current hierarchy since the 2022 takeover, Graham Potter and Mauricio Pochettino, did not forge much of a connection during their brief tenures.

“It’s one of the reasons why he should still be given a chance,” Barker argues. “Pochettino came with Tottenham baggage (having managed one of Chelsea’s biggest rivals) and a lot of fans never accepted him because of it. Enzo will at least come onto the pitch after games and also says things in interviews after a defeat like, ‘The fans deserve better’. It is good to at least be acknowledged in some way.”

Maresca has projected a sense of authority, according to Chelsea fans (Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)

It was noticeable how even after the underwhelming display on Thursday, the sizeable travelling contingent who made the trip to Denmark gave the players and coaching staff a warm send-off when they went over to them before heading down the tunnel.

“This is the difference Maresca has made,” Overend says. “The whole squad do a lap of honour after home games and that gesture shows that they are trying to appreciate the fans more. Every away day, Maresca will make sure the fans are addressed and applauded, even if we don’t win. Pochettino didn’t do that, Potter didn’t have that gravitas and it wasn’t to be with him. But I think Maresca has really made that effort and it rubs off. However, it rubbed off a lot more when the results were good. Inevitably, once they turned bad, it had less importance. That’s fickle fans for you.”

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The beauty of football is people watch the same team play and have a variety of opinions about what they see. Kydd doesn’t envision Maresca lasting long at Chelsea, regardless. He says: “Many of us all have the same attitude, which is that this just isn’t good enough; he’s not good enough, the club have appointed a really inexperienced manager who is trying to learn to deal with this on his feet and can’t. He’s out of his depth.”

Beerman looks at decisions being made and dismisses Maresca as just a ‘yes-man’. But then in contrast you have Overend, who has high hopes for how the manager’s debut season will end. He says: “If Chelsea qualify for the Champions League and get the first silverware under the new ownership, what more could anyone have asked for?”

Whatever the result against Leicester, one suspects the debate over Maresca at Chelsea is only just beginning.

(Top photo: Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)