Enzo Maresca's explosive Chelsea exit: How everything unravelled after a year of tension

Tom Weber

• 1 Jan 2026 08:28 CST
• 6 min read

Analysis

Chelsea and head coach Enzo Maresca have parted company after a remarkable 48 hours.

The Blues were held to a disappointing draw by Bournemouth on Tuesday, leaving them with just two wins - against Everton and third-tier Cardiff City - from their previous nine outings.

Maresca refused to face the media at Stamford Bridge after the game, with his assistant Willy Caballero telling the press that the Italian had been feeling unwell in the days leading up to the game.

However, as it has since been revealed, Maresca's absence was not due to illness. Instead, the manager refused to carry out his media duties because he had begun seriously considering his future.

FootballTransfers understands that a confrontation between Maresca and an undisclosed senior figure at Chelsea took place in the immediate aftermath of the Bournemouth game. Less than 48 hours later, the Italian and Chelsea have decided to go their separate ways.

How Maresca's Chelsea tenure unravelled

Tuesday was ultimately the straw that broke the camel's back and made Maresca's position untenable, but tension had been bubbling at Stamford Bridge for a year.

When Mauricio Pochettino left Chelsea in the summer of 2024 due to philosophical differences with the club's hierarchy, it was a clear sign that Blues bosses wanted a more malleable coach.

Pochettino is an old-school manager who wants control rather than a modern head coach who is just focused on training and matches. Maresca was viewed as the antithesis of the Argentine, as someone who had fully bought into Chelsea's youth-driven model, where recruitment is the domain of the sporting director(s) and not the coach.

Maresca was hired to be a project manager rather than a short-term fix, hence the decision to give him a five-year contract. However, it now looks clear that it is difficult to keep a coach happy for the long term while trying to actively curtail his influence.

The first tension behind the scenes at Chelsea arose around this time last year. Maresca was unable to immediately implement his possession-based approach, so his side played a mish-mash of Pochettino's counter-attacking football and 'Marescaball' in the early stages of 2024/25.

This was reasonably successful, but the more Maresca was able to impose his ideas, the worse Chelsea seemed to play. This culminated in a dire run of form over the winter, which Sky Sports reports is when the first signs of a rift between the coach and senior figures at the club appeared.

Despite reports of a potential sacking at the time, Chelsea kept the faith in Maresca, and it ultimately paid dividends. Results stabilised, Chelsea qualified for the Champions League and won the Conference League as well as the Club World Cup in the summer.

By the end of the summer, however, the mood had soured again. Key defender Levi Colwill suffered an ACL injury shortly after Chelsea started their post-World Cup pre-season, prompting Maresca to publicly demand the signing of a new centre-back.

This recruit never materialised, with Chelsea having to be careful about their spending after breaching UEFA's Squad Cost Ratio rule. They had to end the transfer window with a positive balance in order to register new players for the Champions League, so club chiefs, having spent lavishly on attackers, felt that they were not in a position to add further players.

History would prove Maresca correct as Chelsea's defence ended up being a major headache in the first half of the 2025/26 season. The 45-year-old publicly slammed his defenders after a 3-1 loss to Leeds in early December and then dropped a veritable bomb 10 days later.

Mutual distrust between Maresca and Chelsea

After bouncing back from a four-game winless run with a 2-0 victory over Everton, Maresca claimed that the preceding 48 hours had been the worst of his Chelsea tenure due to a lack of support.

This was a clear message to the club's board, even if Maresca did not explicitly say so. He refused to backtrack on his comments when talking to the media a few days later.

The already tense situation was further complicated by the news that the Italian is high on Man City's shortlist of replacements for Pep Guardiola. Maresca was previously the Spaniard's assistant before taking the Leicester and Chelsea jobs.

David Ornstein has now revealed that Chelsea were already aware of the interest before this news reached the public because Maresca, as stipulated in his contract, had to inform the club of contact with suitors. He did so twice in October and again after his Everton bombshell.

Ben Jacobs states that Maresca's admission took senior figures by surprise and sparked doubts over his commitment to the cause. They felt that he had become distracted by Man City's courtship.

This makes it clear that there was a mutual feeling of distrust and that both parties had grievances. It wasn't just Maresca being unhappy about getting boxed in by Chelsea's clearly delineated leadership structure. Both sides felt that the other interfered in matters outside of their remit.

One of the most glaring examples was player welfare. Chelsea insist that decisions over workload and return-to-play protocols have to be made exclusively by the medical team, not the coach. Maresca, it is insinuated, refused to respect this clear boundary.

Results, of course, also matter. For the second season running, Chelsea have run out of gas in the winter, and the recent downturn in form added further fuel to this already explosive situation. The spark that ultimately caused this powder keg to burst came on Tuesday.

As mentioned, FootballTransfers has been told that a confrontation between Maresca and a senior figure, believed to have been one of the owners but not Todd Boehly, took place after the 2-2 draw with Bournemouth at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday.

Maresca refused to carry out his media duties after the game, ostensibly because he was feeling unwell. It has now been revealed that this was not the real reason. Instead, as Sky Sports put it, Maresca felt that a "red line had been crossed."

On Wednesday, reports in the media began proliferating that tension between Maresca and the Chelsea board was close to reaching boiling point and that it was no longer guaranteed that he would survive January, let alone until the end of the season.

Maresca, it seems, already decided to leave Chelsea on Wednesday. Jacobs reports that his new agent, Jorge Mendes, began discussing an exit package with the club on Wednesday night.

A final decision then came on Thursday morning, with Chelsea officially announcing that they have decided to mutually part ways with Maresca. Liam Rosenior, currently in charge of sister club Strasbourg, is among the favourites to succeed the 45-year-old.

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