New Chelsea coach Enzo Maresca aims to change the team’s culture and bring more aggression to improve the performance of last season’s Premier League underachievers.
Chelsea spent most of the season in mid-table before a late push under former manager Mauricio Pochettino secured sixth place and qualification for the Europa Conference League.
Maresca, 44, led Leicester City to promotion to the English top flight in his first season as manager.
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“When you join a club, you try to analyze what the club and team need to improve and do the right things,” Maresca said at his first news conference on Monday.
“For me, it’s clear we need to create the right mentality and culture as soon as possible, a culture the fans can be proud of.
“We are going to try to be an aggressive team on and off the ball and we need to create this connection between the fans and the club, especially at home.”
Maresca is Chelsea’s seventh Italian manager and aims to follow compatriots Carlo Ancelotti, Antonio Conte, and Roberto Di Matteo, who won six major trophies between them at the London club.
Gianluca Vialli, the Premier League’s first Italian manager, led Chelsea to their first appearance in the Champions League.
“One of the reasons for sure [I joined]. I’m very proud to be an Italian manager here again. There is probably something between Chelsea as a club, as a family, and Italian people that works well,” Maresca said.
Maresca will face champions Manchester City, where he previously worked as an assistant to Pep Guardiola during their treble-winning season, in his first league game in charge of Chelsea.
It’s clear the U.S. men’s national team needs a new direction. Since the 2022 World Cup, when the USMNT exited in the round of 16 against a superior Netherlands side, there has been little to no evidence of progression. In fact, it looks like the USMNT has been regressing over the past two years.
Recent subpar results have been largely overlooked, and everyone continued to believe the talent level of this U.S. side alone is enough. A second-leg loss to Trinidad & Tobago in the Concacaf Nations League didn’t matter because the USMNT advanced on aggregate anyway. A poor performance against Jamaica in the Nations League ended with the Americans being saved by a last-minute Jamaica own goal. The 5-1 loss to Colombia was “only” a pre-Copa America friendly.
But after the USMNT got knocked out in the group stage of the Copa America following losses to Panama and Uruguay — plus a not-big-enough win over lowly Bolivia — those previous poor performances look like ignored warning signs.
Whenever the discussion of moving on from coach Gregg Berhalter has come up, it has inevitably turned to: “Well, who is going to replace him?” The prevailing narrative has been that there aren’t any coaches better than Berhalter whom the U.S. Soccer Federation can try to hire.
With that in mind, ESPN reporters/analysts Jeff Carlisle, Luis Miguel Echegaray, Cesar Hernandez, Lizzy Becherano, Tim Vickery, Caitlin Murray, and Bill Connelly offer up 16 candidates U.S. Soccer should consider as possible replacements for Berhalter. With a World Cup on U.S. soil coming quickly in 2026, U.S. Soccer has little time to spare.
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