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New Year. New you. Same old Chelsea.
The Premier League club are once again searching for a new head coach after parting company with Enzo Maresca.
It marks a startling disintegration for the Italian tactician, who led the Blues to glory in the UEFA Conference League and FIFA Club World Cup last season, along with securing qualification for the Champions League.
In Europe's biggest competition, Chelsea appeared to be heading in the right direction after they dispatched Barcelona 3-0 at Stamford Bridge in November, a result they followed with a battling 1-1 draw against Arsenal despite being reduced to 10 men when Moises Caicedo was sent off before halftime.
That performance marked the west London club out as potential title challengers. In reality, it began a run of just two wins in nine matches across all competitions, with one of those coming against League One Cardiff in the Carabao Cup. Across this slump, relations between club and manager unravelled to a point of no return.
What did Enzo Maresca say about Chelsea?
Despite last season's top-line achievements, the overarching issue for Maresca at Chelsea was a continued sense of a couple of steps back following any big moment of progress.
For example, the Barcelona and Arsenal performances were not expected to precede a run of four winless games, including defeat to relegation-threatened Leeds United in the Premier League and Atalanta in the Champions League.
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A return to winning ways with a routine 2-0 victory over Everton felt like a time to draw a line under a frustrating period. Instead, Maresca opted to escalate grievances publicly, setting in motion the chain of events that sees him ushering in the new year without a job
“The last 48 hours have been the hardest since I joined the club because so many people didn’t support me and the team," he said after the Everton match. The fact this headline remark was in answer to a question about the form of right-back Malo Gusto made it clear Maresca has something to get off his chest.
The 45-year-old went on to express his "love" for Chelsea fans, meaning his comments were widely assumed to have been directed towards sporting directors Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley.
When he was asked to expand upon the quotes prior to the Carabao Cup quarterfinal at Cardiff, Maresca claimed he had been "quite clear", which he hadn't been exactly. Speculation that emerged later that week made his outburst look like a potentially calculated power play.
MORE: Carabao Cup 2025/26 round dates, schedule, results for each phase of English football tournament
Will Maresca replace Pep Guardiola at Man City?
On Thursday, December 18, The Athletic's David Ornstein reported Maresca was under consideration to be the next manager of Manchester City if Pep Guardiola leaves at the end of this season. The 45-year-old was City's Under-23 manager in 2020/21, leading a team featuring Cole Palmer to Premier League 2 glory. He returned to the Etihad Stadium to work as one of Guardiola's assistants during the treble-winning season in 2022/23.
"It doesn't affect me at all because I know it's 100 per cent speculation," Maresca said prior to that weekend's visit to Newcastle, where Chelsea recovered from an abject first-half display to claim a 2-0 draw.
Ahead of City's match against West Ham that weekend, Guardiola – who is under contract until June 2027 – was similarly dismissive.
Asked whether he would see out his deal amid the Maresca speculation, he said: "The last three or four years at a certain period, I get asked this question. Sooner or later, 75 or 76, I will quit from Manchester City. I understand that question, but I have 18 months, I am so delighted and have been."
With the path to the Etihad Stadium, one that always felt slightly fanciful, closed, attention returned to what Maresca's game might have been. Juventus have also been credited with an interest in the former Parma boss.
The best guess was it related to Chelsea's ongoing project of racking up promising young players with a high resale value. Even with Maresca gone, they are likely to be active in the January transfer window
Why Chelsea 'parted ways' with Enzo Maresca?
All of that bad blood and confusion might have been smoothed over if Chelsea had started winning some football matches again. But a defeat from 1-0 up at home to Aston Villa and a 2-2 Stamford Bridge draw against struggling Bournemouth left Maresca out of road.
Chelsea lay fifth in the Premier League after the latter match, when sections of the home crowd booed Maresca.
Following the Bournemouth game, he left post-match media duties to assistant coach Willy Caballero. Former Argentina goalkeeper Caballero claimed Maresca had been feeling unwell for a few days, although this version of events was questioned in Jacob Steinberg's piece for The Guardian on January 1, which broke the news that Maresca was likely to be sacked.
A statement from Chelsea read:
During his time at the club, Enzo led the team to success in the UEFA Conference League and the FIFA Club World Cup. Those achievements will remain an important part of the club’s recent history, and we thank him for his contributions to the club.
With key objectives still to play for across four competitions, including qualification for Champions League football, Enzo and the club believe a change gives the team the best chance of getting the season back on track.
We wish Enzo well for the future.
The phrasing of "parted ways" in the statement suggests a form of a settlement has been agreed with Maresca, as opposed to payment in full of the remainder of his contract, which ran until June 2029 and was worth £4million ($5.3m) annually (as per ESPN)
One suggestion in the Guardian article was that Maresca wanted more power over football and squad decisions, something that Chelsea's ownership was never likely to countenance, given they have built an extensive recruitment team focused on bringing in the best young talent in football.
The argument will be that plenty of coaches will be more amenable to that deal than Maresca ultimately was. It is, perhaps, no surprise to see Strasbourg head coach Liam Rosenior leading the betting, given the Ligue 1 club are also part of the BlueCo multi-club ownership group overseen by Chelsea chairman Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital.
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