Former Manchester City assistant Enzo Maresca becomes the new Leicester City manager, his appointment a departure from those made by the King Power hierarchy previously
Appointing Enzo Maresca is a step into the unknown for Leicester City and marks the boldest managerial decision made by King Power in their 13 years at the club.
There is so little evidence of how he manages a senior side, that his arrival is a gamble, no matter how highly regarded he is as a coach. Fourteen games with Parma is nowhere near enough to give an indication of the side City could become. However, that it is a gamble brings excitement.
The other leading contenders for the job, Dean Smith and Scott Parker, have three Championship promotions between them. They would have been safer bets. But their flaws as managers are already known.
City supporters have already had a taste of Smith and while relegation was definitely not his fault, he didn’t do enough to convince he should be the club’s manager going forward. With Parker, City fans received countless messages from those following Fulham and Bournemouth warning them of the former England midfielder’s pitfalls as a boss.
With Maresca, because he has such little experience as a first-team manager, there’s nobody to point out the downsides. There are no past failures to his name. Even the briefness of his spell at Parma has been attributed to the chaos of the club, rather than anything he did as manager.
With no negatives to hold him back, he can be viewed with optimism. His appointment could be a stroke of genius. Nobody knows. But there is nothing to say at the moment that it won’t be. Pep Guardiola’s appreciation of him is enough to allow City supporters to have hope he could be a success.
It could also be a disaster. With Smith and Parker, and their knowledge of the Championship and experience of promotion, there are at least some assurances there that they would do a decent job, certainly preventing City from plummeting down the division. With Maresca, there is nothing to guarantee that won’t happen. That’s why it’s a risk.
But it is a risk that will win people back over. City have usually gone for safe bets. The arrival of Claudio Ranieri was perhaps their most out-there appointment, as his previous match in a dugout before arriving saw his Greece team lose to the Faroe Islands. But he did at least have Premier League experience.
Every boss City have appointed under King Power has either had Premier League experience, or in the case of Nigel Pearson and Craig Shakespeare, already knew the club inside out. Maresca has neither.
But showing they are willing to be braver in their decision-making may show to supporters that they are willing to be more open-minded, and that they are learning from past problems. It feels like a clean break. The past is in now truly in the past. That adds to the buzz of excitement that is building around Maresca’s arrival.
