Football’s Chelsea Job: A Sacrificial Role?

It is a time, I am sure, of great celebration for Enzo Maresca. A time when he has been anointed Chelsea head coach, a time when all his brilliant work at Leicester City in the season just passed has been recognised and rewarded with a promotion to one of the biggest jobs in the game.

But it is hard to look at what lies ahead at Stamford Bridge without worrying for him. Not in a financial sense, of course. The five-year deal that has taken him and his small army of staff to west London should see him set for life. His career prospects, though, are very much in the balance.

Because coaching Chelsea, under the current ownership of Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali, is as close to The Impossible Job as it gets in English football at the moment.

Getting the job is a cause for celebration, sure, as long as you’re aware it’s football’s version of being selected for human sacrifice. It’s an honour, you get treated like a God for a little while, you get flattered and fattened up.

And then one of the two co-sporting directors says it’s your fault that you’re not making sense of the chaos and someone takes you out for dinner at a nice restaurant in Mayfair and turns your lights out.

The Chelsea manager’s position has become close to The Impossible Job under Todd Boehly (left) and Behdad Eghbali (right)

Maybe a sense of foreboding was why it took some time for Maresca to put the finishing touches to the deal that made him the new Chelsea boss, although whether he is actually the boss is a moot point in itself.

The manager being the boss is rather an old-fashioned idea at Chelsea, it seems. Maresca has been selected as the successor to Mauricio Pochettino partly because it is said he is happy to be part of a ‘collaborative structure’ at the club, a cog in a wheel.

A ‘collaborative structure’ is just business speak for telling Maresca he’s not going to be in charge. A ‘collaborative structure’ is business speak for saying that the suits are going to be running the show.

The impression, certainly, is that it is very much Boehly and Eghbali who will call the shots, abetted by those co-sporting directors, Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart. Maresca’s way down the food chain.

When one considers some of the other talents available, including strong characters like former Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel and ex-Brighton manager Roberto De Zerbi, it appears Maresca has been hired for his malleability as well as his coaching ability.

Apart from that coaching ability, though, the way his appointment is being talked about makes it feel as if his number one quality is that he won’t rock the boat. Which seems an odd premise on which to try to make Chelsea a power in the game again.

Mauricio Pochettino left Chelsea after just one season at the club last month

Former Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel was available to replace Pochettino

Roberto De Zerbi also could have been brought in after leaving Brighton, but Chelsea have opted for Maresca

Then again, when you’ve got an owner like Eghbali, who likes to pop into the dressing room now and again and you’ve got a posse of people above you in the pecking order, knowing your place is going to be crucial.

It is hard to imagine Pochettino, De Zerbi or Tuchel accepting such a subservient role but maybe that just means Maresca is more suited to being a consensus politician at the club’s Cobham training ground.

As for the five-year contract, you’ll have to excuse me for being cynical about that, too. I’ve only got one hat and I’m rather fond of it don’t wear hats but I’ll eat it if Maresca sees out that five-year contract.

I’d be surprised if he makes it to two years. My best guess is that he’ll make it to the season after next. So maybe Chelsea’s owners are feeling excessively generous. Maybe they’re feeling excessively optimistic. Or maybe there’s a host of break clauses written into that contract.

Boehly and Eghbali have, after all, been through five permanent and interim managers since buying the club two years ago. When you get through that many marriages, you learn a few lessons, surely.

I hope Maresca succeeds. I hope he succeeds for his sake and the sake of the Chelsea fans. But the reality is he is not remotely as well-qualified as his three full-time predecessors, Tuchel, Graham Potter and Pochettino, to make sense of Chelsea.

Maresca’s front-line experience amounts to being fired after a season in Serie B with Parma, taking charge of Manchester City’s Elite Development Squad, and a season in the Championship with Leicester, when the odds were hugely stacked in his favour because of the squad he inherited.

Mail Sport columnist Oliver Holt (pictured) will be stunned if he sees out his five-year deal

He has worked with Pep Guardiola, which counts for almost as much as fitting into a ‘collaborative structure’ these days. The managers are legion who are basking in the reflected glory of being Pep’s mate.

None of this is to say that Maresca is not a capable manager. His Leicester team played some fine football in the Championship and deserved to go up as champions. But is it really preparation for taking charge of a club like the current-day Chelsea?

The club has become the basket-case of the Premier League, a byword for misplaced self-satisfaction and endless hubris, saddled with an ownership whose idea of recruitment strategy has amounted to little more than a £1bn supermarket trolley dash.

At this point, it is worth saying that respected voices within the game, men like Simon Jordan and Peterborough United owner Darragh MacAnthony, discern much that they admire in Chelsea’s new business model and they are people who deserved to be listened to.

I’m still struggling to see it. It took until the end of the season for Pochettino to start making sense of the proliferation of signings that were dumped on the club and so, naturally, it was at that point that Chelsea let him go.

Sometimes, clubs thrive on churn but it is hard to escape the conclusion that what Chelsea needed more than anything this summer was a break from constant upheaval. They were making progress at last. They needed some continuity.

Instead, they have appointed someone new and emasculated him before he starts by naming him as head coach, not manager. They are starting again. Many reports suggest that the players are bewildered by Pochettino’s treatment.

Neutrals everywhere will wish Maresca good luck, secure in the knowledge he is going to need it.

Terzic shows grace in defeat

I mentioned last week how I had been struck by the generosity of Southampton’s Jack Stephens at the end of his side’s Championship play-off win over Leeds. 

This week, it was hard not to notice the grace in defeat shown by Edin Terzic, the Borussia Dortmund coach. Long after his side’s loss to Real Madrid in the Champions League final, Terzic was wandering around the pitch, congratulating the Madrid camp on their victory. 

He even sought out the parents of Jude Bellingham, who played for him at Dortmund, to congratulate them.

And even though this risks contradicting the habit of a lifetime, praise is also due to Jose Mourinho. The Portuguese, who was at Wembley as a pundit, approached Terzic after the game and wrapped him in a long consoling hug. It was a classy gesture from one of the managerial greats.

Edin Terzic (left) showed grace in defeat on Saturday as he congratulated Jude Bellingham’s parents

Jose Mourinho hugging Terzic to console him after full time was a classy gesture

Burrow is one of sport’s greatest heroes 

I never had the honour of meeting Rob Burrow. I never even saw him play. 

And so it is a tribute to the second act of his remarkable life that he will forever be etched in my mind as one of sport’s greatest heroes. 

His courage in the face of his diagnosis with motor neurone disease and the example he set as he continued to live his life was an example of a kind of bravery that left me in awe of the man.

Rob Burrow’s bravery left me in awe of one of sport’s greatest heroes