Enzo Maresca Managerial Scouting Report: The Pros and Cons of Diet Pep

The next head on the BlueCo Chelsea chopping block is Enzo Maresca, and we are here to analyze his style.

Let’s get straight to it then!

Tactics

In short, it’s all about possession, baby!

Formation

At Leicester, Maresca lined up with either a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-3-3 formation on paper, but in practice, both of those functioned very similarly.

The idea was the same:

• The right back (Ricardo Pereira) inverted to function as a defensive midfielder
• The rest of the defence shifted to make it a 3-2-5 in buildup
• While defending, the team shifted to a 4-5-1 shape

Here are formation charts of how Leicester played in different phases of the match:

• Left: Starting formation on paper
• Center: How Leicester played in possession (3-2-5 with the right back inverted and the wingers high and wide)
• Right: How Leicester played in defence (4-5-1/4-4-1-1 block, depending on the players playing and the phase of the game, that pressed aggressively)

In possession

Maresca, like other possession-obsessed managers, prefers to build out from the back in a slow and controlled manner. The idea is to create a numerical superiority in every part of the pitch as the ball is pushed from his team’s defensive third to the final third.

Maresca, much like Roberto De Zerbi though not quite to the same extent, prefers a deeper build. The idea is to bait the opposition press and then take advantage of the spaces left behind them. However, it’s worth nothing that Leicester did face some issues in the second part of the Championship season, when they were pressed well in specific areas.

The buildup formation is a 3-2-5 with the right-back (in Leicester’s case) tucking in to create a double pivot, while the two 8s push up through the middle to create a front five with the striker and the two wingers. If the opposition man marks the back three defenders and the double pivot, then the goalkeeper joins the buildup to make it a back four. With the goalkeeper joining the buildup, Leicester once again have numerical superiority in buildup.

Beyond this, the wingers stay high and wide in buildup while the striker falls back sometimes during buildup to create a numerical superiority in the middle of the pitch when the two 8s are tracked by the opposition.

Although the strikers for Leicester never had that many touches last season, it’s not like a false-9 position. It’s more about small touches here and there but the striker’s main job is to provide lots of movement towards the ball and then away from the ball towards the goal. Of course, this could also be due to the profile of strikers that were at Leicester and it might change at Chelsea.

Out of possession

There were two out of possession phases with Maresca at Leicester.

• After losing the ball
• Not having the ball for a sustained period of time

After losing the ball: Like any modern big team, the idea is to counter-press aggressively and either win the ball or cut the opposition passing lanes to ensure they are forced to go back.

Not having the ball for a sustained period of time: If Leicester were not able to win the ball with the counter-press, then the team would eventually fall back. The inverted full back would go back to his usual position and the team would resemble something like a 4-4-1-1 or 4-5-1 block (depending on the situation).

Pros and Cons

PRO: Control

Maresca’s entire tactical identity centres on controlling the ball and controlling the pitch. The slow build up from deep, a ball-playing goalkeeper, and creating numerical superiority are all to ensure that Maresca’s team have full control of the ball.

Nothing reflects this better than Opta’s “zones of control” graphic, which shows the areas of the pitch where one team have at least 55% of the total touches in that area. Only two areas were under Leicester’s opponents’ control last season.

And this isn’t just down to their possession (of course that helps). They also press the ball relatively well, as evident from their PPDA (passes per defensive action). They had the third lowest PPDA out of all the teams in Championship.

However, it is worth noting that PPDA has some limitations as a useful metric when it comes to teams that dominate territory.

The main limitation of PPDA is that some teams will have a low PPDA simply because they dominate territory so much. Paris Saint-Germain, for example, will always have one of the lowest PPDA values in Ligue 1, but that will be the result of them dominating possession more than a particularly extreme high press. This means that context or other metrics are needed alongside PPDA to get a truer understanding of a team’s pressing.

-source: Coaches’ Voice

At the same time, even though Leicester had the third lowest PPDA and were fifth in the league in shots taken from those pressing actions, they still had highest numbers of goals resulting from those pressing actions.

PRO: Chance creation

Leicester City last season created the most chances in the Championship, scoring the most goals and amassing the highest total xG from open play.

Of course, it helps to have the strongest team in the league with the highest wage bill ever for the division, but some credit should also go to Maresca.

The way Maresca expects his team to control the ball, it often works as a test of patience and concentration for the opposition, as Leicester would often keep probing with passes all over the pitch and tire teams out. It’s a game of numbers: if they have the ball for 70% of the time, the opposition is bound to make a mistake at some point and that’s what Maresca teams are waiting for, a lapse in judgement.

CON: Porous defence

Leicester conceded the fewest number of goals against Championship teams, which is great … but also expected given the aforementioned wage bill and quality differences between the teams.

Anytime Leicester came up against Premier League teams last season, they were thrashed. Chelsea registered 4.38 xG against Maresca’s Leicester in our 4-2 win over them for example — and that result could have been much, much worse for Leicester if Chelsea could just finish more consistently.

It was the highest xG registered by Chelsea against any opponent last season, higher than we got in our 6-1 win over Middlesbrough, the 6-0 win over Everton, the 5-0 win over West Ham, or the 4-1 win over Spurs. The other time Leicester came up against a Premier League opposition was in EFL Cup, and they lost 3-1 while conceding 2.89 xG.

But more tellingly, teams in the Championship also began to figure them out. Leicester only conceded 16 goals in the first 23 matches of the season before Christmas. After Christmas, they conceded 25 times in the remaining 23 matches: an almost 56% increase in goals conceded, despite easily having the strongest and most expensive squad in Championship.

CON: Tactical stubbornness

As teams in the second half of last season started to figure out Leicester, Maresca refused to change his ways or make adjustments.

Not only did that lead to a 56 per cent increase in goals conceded, it also led to a large increase in matches lost. Their points per game fell to 1.46. If we extrapolate that over a Premier League season, Maresca would have gotten 55-56 points (basically, finished behind United in 9th). 1.46 points per game is really bad if you take everything into consideration, especially Leicester’s talent at disposal.

Despite all this, when asked if he should consider changing their style, Maresca replied he would rather leave the club than adapt his ways. Well then.

“Probably people think it’s easy to win games, but it’s not easy,” he said. “You can feel the fans when they’re not happy. Probably some people take some things for granted. But it’s not like this.

“I arrived at this club to play with this idea. The moment there is some doubt about the idea, the day after, I will leave. It’s so clear. No doubts.”

-Enzo Maresca; source: Sky

CON: Boring football

This one is more of a personal choice, but some Leicester fans found Maresca’s rigid, extremely possession-focused football quite boring. Similar complaints have been made about Guardiola over the years as well, of Maurizio Sarri, as we might remember One team slowly breaking down the other with a series of short passes, however intricate, does not seem fun to a lot of people, including yours truly.

Possession football often feels like a python slowly constricting its prey rather than something fun. Of course, some people might enjoy it, but it will definitely be a shock to go from Poch Chaos-ball to Maresca-ball.

Leicester played so slowly in fact, that they had the second highest average sequence time and the second highest number of passes per sequence. Basically, slow and lots of passes per attacking sequence. They also had the second highest sequence of ten passes or more. But get used to a whole lot of passing!

What Can We Expect At Chelsea?

We can expect Maresca to continue his inverted full back tactic and continue to play a 3-2-5 in possession with a double pivot and wingers high and wide.

Keeping that in mind, here are the roles and the players that could play in those positions:

• GK: We need to sign someone here since Maresca’s goalkeepers need to be very comfortable with the ball at their feet during deep buildup. Immense pressure is put on them and losing ball in these situations can be catastrophic.

• CB: Good, ball playing centre backs who are athletic are a must. Levi Colwill, Wesley Fofana, Trevoh Chalobah all are good options for this role; Axel Disasi and Benoî Badiashile can be good, too.
• FB: Every fullback in our club except Ben Chilwell is well suited to the role of the traditional fullback. Since Chilwell plays more like a wingback, maybe he would not have the necessary discipline or patience to play in this role
• Inverted FB: Marc Cucurella has already shown to be decent at this role under Pochettino. Reece James played in midfield at Wigan so he could easily slot into this role as well. Malo Gusto could be trained up as well. It really depends on which side Maresca wants to invert.

• DM: Moisés Caicedo would be an easy slot and play in this role, being deputized by Roméo Lavia. However, considering Harry Winks at Leicester would often get 100 touches in this role and how Enzo Fernández has struggled further up the pitch under Pochettino, I could also see Enzo in this role. In fact, I would go as far as to say that for me in this system, this would be the position for which Enzo would be most suited.

• 8s and wingers: There is complexity here. Ideally, Maresca would go simple and choose Cole Palmer-Enzo as the two 8s and then Noni Madueke as the RW and Mykhailo Mudryk as the LW. However, this skips Christopher Nkunku, unless he is played as a striker.

Other alternative is that we play Nkunku as LW but I don’t see this being a great fit as the wingers in Maresca’s system have to play high and wide for those 1v1s. You need a ball carrier whereas Nkunku, like Palmer, excels in tight and half spaces, not stuck out wide.

We could also play Nkunku as an 8 and switch Palmer out wide on the right, but that has the same issue as Nkunku being on the left, just on the right. Palmer naturally drifts towards half spaces and that’s where he is devastating.

• Striker: Easy. Nicolas Jackson could play here, so could Nkunku, and so could the new striker who we might sign. Personally, I’d let Jackson and Nkunku to duke it out for the position. I don’t think there is as severe a need for a striker, as there is for a left back, centre back, and goalkeeper.

Conclusion

In terms of positives, we can expect to see a lot of possession, good combinations and lots of control.

On the downside, we can expect slow football sometimes, individual errors at the back, and tactical stubbornness especially in games after the opposition have figured us out (or in cases where the opposition are better than us).

In terms of the squad, we seem to have a lot of players who would be well suited to Maresca’s tactics, but we also have a few question marks like how would Nkunku, Palmer, Jackson, Madueke and Enzo all fit in the same team (unless Maresca modified his tactics a bit).

Interesting times ahead!