There is no preordained route to becoming Chelsea head coach. Each journey is different, each experience is equally valid. This is Enzo Maresca’s story…

Born in the south west of Italy, his football education truly started several hundred miles away with AC Milan. It was in the early 1990s, the halcyon days of Serie A, and it was that Milan.

Baresi, Maldini, Gullit, Rijkaard, Boban, Papin, van Basten. Maresca watched them all at close quarters. He joined the club at eleven years old and was regularly a ballboy at San Siro as Milan, built by Arrigo Sacchi and then coached by Fabio Capello, lifted silverware on a yearly basis.

Cagliari was the next stop for Maresca; he spent four years with the club as a teenager. Then came a decision that changed everything. He gave up the summer sun of Sardinia for wet and windy winters in West Bromwich.

Cagliari was the next stop for Maresca; he spent four years with the club as a teenager. Then came a decision that changed everything. He gave up the summer sun of Sardinia for wet and windy winters in West Bromwich.

Maresca could not speak English. Nor was there an enclave of his fellow countrymen at the club, then in the First Division. It’s testament to his strength of character and willingness to learn that he succeeded.

‘It was completely different,’ Maresca recalls with a smile. ‘When you move so young – I was almost 18 and didn’t speak any English – it is quite difficult.

‘The culture was completely different, the food was completely different, everything was different. But you have to adapt, you have to understand and you have to learn.

‘It was fantastic for me in terms of an experience because it shaped me a little bit [as a person].’

Maresca’s career in football is littered with similar bold decisions – and it was something of a full circle moment when Leicester City, another Midlands-based club, provided his first head coach’s role in English football in June 2023.

Leicester is an important chapter in the Maresca story. Yet much came before, both as a player and coach.

There were his four years with Juventus, where he played under Carlo Ancelotti and walked into a dressing room that included the likes of Antonio Conte, Pavel Nedved, Zinedine Zidane and Alessandro del Piero. His season at Fiorentina. His time in Spain with Sevilla and Malaga – and let’s pause here.

The importance of his spells with the two Andalusian clubs should not be brushed over. Maresca explains: ‘I was in Spain for six years and I met my wife during that time and I had kids there, so it was an important moment in my personal life.

‘Also in that moment, Barcelona were playing fantastic football and everyone was watching Barcelona and seeing the Spain national team winning competitions like the World Cup. So it was important in my professional life.’

Such is his coach’s mindset, Maresca does not highlight that during his time with Sevilla, he twice lifted the UEFA Cup and also celebrated triumphs in the Copa del Rey, Supercopa de Espana and the UEFA Super Cup.

While Maresca started to analyse the intricacies of Barcelona’s football from afar, he also worked with a coach at Malaga who left a lasting impression. ‘Manuel Pellegrini helped me a lot in terms of me becoming a manager in the future,’ he says.

‘And Pep [Guardiola] was at Barcelona playing fantastic football so I was curious at that point as to the reasons why they were playing so well. From then I started analysing games.’

The latter years of Maresca’s playing career were spent back in Italy. He then transitioned to coaching and undertook his pro-licence at Coverciano, the renowned Italian coaching school in the hills of Florence.

It was immediately clear that Maresca was a deep thinker as a coach. It’s why he was brought into Pellegrini’s coaching staff during his time at West Ham, why he enjoyed success with Manchester City’s Under-21s and later joined Guardiola’s first-team staff.

And why after taking charge at Leicester City, he guided the club to the Championship title at the first time of asking.

Now at Chelsea, and as head coach, Maresca’s appetite for the game has only heightened. He is in early at Cobham and stays late. The days off have been few and far between.

‘Every season, the first few months are very intense so there is not time to do many different things,’ he says.

‘The first few months have been easy in the sense that I’m going from home to the training ground and then back home. My wife and the kids are here, though, so when I am at home, I can share some time with them.’

Swift progress has been made. The Italian highlights that new tactical approaches have been implemented and applied during the early weeks of the campaign.

‘We are ahead of where I expected, to be honest,’ he says. ‘Since I have started, the players have been open-minded and they are taking in all of the information.

‘Off the ball, we have already pressed in four or five different ways. On the ball, it depends on how the opposition defend because we try to find a different solution. Against Crystal Palace and in the friendly game against Inter Milan, we played in one way and then in the others we played in another way.

‘We try to adapt to how the opposition defend and how they attack and prepare for the game.’

Maresca is at ease when discussing tactics. Yet there is far more to him as a coach. He is approachable, warm, amusing. Players enjoy their time working with him, both on and off the pitch.

Some of the players who have played for Maresca talk about him being not only a great coach but a great man too.

‘They are all friends of mine, that is why they say that. I paid them to say that!’ he jokes when that point is put to him. ‘Because of my experience as a player, I like to be quite close with the players because they need to feel the head coach wants them to be close in every aspect, not only football.

‘Most of the time we are talking about football but in general I like to be quite close with the players.’

He continues: ‘You have to be honest with them, because they realise when you are not. When you speak to 22 to 25 players and you are not honest, they can see that. At the end of the day, they prefer when you are being real with them.’

Via Italy, West Bromwich, Spain, Manchester, and Leicester, is where the Maresca Chelsea story has reached – what comes next is for the Blues head coach and his players to write in the weeks and months ahead.