The Fosse Way

Enzo Maresca is reportedly on the verge of leaving Leicester City to join Chelsea. Having just won silverware in his first – and seemingly only – season in charge, why aren’t Leicester fans more upset?

Time flies when you’re at the mercy of the big six. It was less than a year ago that I dropped what I was doing and sat down to write about how we should take a risk on Enzo Maresca. Another early summer afternoon. Another bat signal from John Percy. Another managerial shake-up on the horizon at Leicester City Football Club.

To neutrals, it might seem like a huge blow for Leicester to lose the manager who has come in and won the Championship title, consigning the other two relegated teams to the play-offs in the process. It was a massive achievement, one that looks all the more impressive after watching Leeds United tumble to their fate yesterday at Wembley.

But despite what Guillem Balague would have you believe, the number of Leicester fans throwing their full support behind Maresca never got near his 99.9% figure. The doubters weren’t all in one camp either. There were those who were sceptical from the start, not enjoying the style of play. There were those who started to doubt him during the long bad patch of form in the new year and there were those who began to worry as the season neared its end about how his style of play would translate to the Premier League.

There’s another subset of Leicester supporters who might not identify with any of those descriptions but who will not be devastated about Maresca’s departure either. I’m in that group – someone who enjoyed the early wins, still stayed with him during the dip and refused to get too concerned about what was coming next year; yet not feeling now like I did when Martin O’Neill left for Celtic, if we can use that as the benchmark for sickening managerial exits.

Reasons not to be fearful – 1, 2, 3

There are three reasons for this. 

Firstly, no matter how good you might be, if you want to leave after a year then thank you very much and let’s move on. A year isn’t long enough to form a deeply emotional bond. The benchmark here is a player, one who had the biggest impact in the shortest period of time – N’Golo Kante. Cheers for being integral to the greatest achievement in sporting history – and we move on. Maresca always had the feel of someone who would be a positive footnote that suited both parties as they headed somewhere else rather than the main man during a glorious era.

Secondly – and perhaps this is an age thing – but I find myself getting less and less invested in the individuals who pass through Leicester City Football Club. Maybe Jamie Vardy has set the bar so high that nobody else could ever come close to any sentimental expectations. But after losing the likes of James Maddison, Youri Tielemans and Harvey Barnes a year ago and watching them forging new bonds with new sets of supporters, we’ve reacquainted ourselves with loss. We’d been used to losing one big name to the big six each summer. The one time we tried to kid ourselves we were past all that, we apparently ruined the football club.

The third reason is linked to that problem, and it’s something Maresca correctly identified as a failing. Until the club improves its communication with fans about the long-term vision for the club and appoints either someone new or more people in general to oversee the football operations, our best performers on and off the field will always leave. 

The two large-scale resets we’ve needed for several years – in how the football club operates and the expectations of the supporters – may finally arrive this summer. The former will need a shake-up and the latter feels like an inevitability given promotion is only a staging post in the long climb back to being an established Premier League club.

Of course, football fans are not meant to be ambivalent. We’re not allowed to be ambivalent. There must be constant hot takes, neverending limbs. The binary, polarising nature of social media and talk radio demands it. But it’s too exhausting to keep up unless you have some kind of personality disorder. We go through peaks and troughs, both as individuals and as a fanbase. I think I’ve seen enough shoulder-shrugging online to the prospect of Maresca’s exit to say this is a collective trough in our passion as a fanbase for this football club. 

The climax to the 2023/24 season carried a massive sense of just getting through it and worrying later about what happens next. We were greeted with messages of “congratulations, enjoy the points deduction”.

And whatever you think of the decision-making at the football club over the past few years and its impact on the threat of sanctions, we are not the only set of supporters to gradually realise whatever version of the Profitability and Sustainability Rules are imposed, everything is designed to give football clubs like ours a ceiling. We are fortunate that it was us specifically they were trying to stop ever happening again, because it gives us the memories that fans of other clubs will, it seems, never experience.

What lies ahead

After seeing Leicester City see and win it all over the past decade, the Championship was a breath of fresh air in some respects – new grounds for some, no VAR, scant interest from the national media.

Speculation over Maresca’s future has been a reminder of what awaits us this season. People will be talking about us again. We can use one of the first positive milestones in Enzo Maresca’s reign as an example. As others have correctly pointed out, the first twenty minutes or so of the pre-season game against Liverpool in Singapore were something of a revelation and all the clues you needed to predict our success were there. The BBC report on the game fails to give even a word to our performance. Our players may as well have been training cones. But we repeatedly tore through a well-drilled team full of internationals. It was tantalising to watch.

Admittedly, we still lost 4-0 and this is the kind of role we will be playing again next season: cannon fodder for the rich. It would be interesting to see how Enzoball would fare in the Premier League. It seems far more likely we’ll be seeing a watered-down version now under someone like Graham Potter or Carlos Corberan, and that may suit us better.

For while Maresca does have the feel of an elite coach and our owner apparently wants us to play like Manchester City, nobody seems to have told those in charge of our transfer policy. Maresca stuck to his principles in spite of the squad rather than because of the players available to him. We may need someone far more pragmatic and flexible given the challenges ahead.

It’s easy to see Maresca doing well at Stamford Bridge, with the players and resources that will help achieve his aims at the top level. There’s surprisingly little bitterness and he may even get a good reception on his return, which hasn’t always been the case for people jumping ship to join Chelsea. As with Kante, he couldn’t really have achieved anything more in his 12 months.

Grazie, arrivederci and perhaps this suits everyone.