The Chelsea job is football’s version of being selected for human sacrifice… I’ll eat my hat if Enzo Maresca sees out his five-year contract, writes OLIVER HOLT

I’m sure it’s a time of great celebration for Enzo Maresca. A time when he has been appointed head coach of Chelsea, a time when all his brilliant work at Leicester City in the season just ended has been recognized and rewarded with a promotion to one of the biggest jobs in the sport.

But it’s hard to look at what lies ahead at Stamford Bridge without worrying. Not in a financial sense, of course. The five-year deal that has brought him and his small army of staff to west London should earn him life support. However, his career prospects are at stake.

Because coaching Chelsea, under the current leadership of Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali, is as close to The Impossible Job as you can get in English football at the moment.

Getting the job is of course a cause for celebration, as long as you are aware that this is football’s version of being selected for human sacrifice. It’s an honor, you’re treated like a God for a while, you’re flattered and fattened.

And then one of the two co-sports directors says it’s your fault for not understanding the chaos and someone takes you out to eat at a nice restaurant in Mayfair and turns your lights off.

Perhaps it was a premonition that it took some time for Maresca to finalize the deal that made him the new Chelsea boss, although whether he is actually in charge is itself a moot point.

The manager being in charge is quite an old-fashioned idea at Chelsea, it seems. Maresca has been selected as Mauricio Pochettino’s successor, partly because he is said to be keen to be part of a ‘collaborative structure’ at the club, a cog in a wheel.

A “partnership structure” is just business talk when you tell Maresca he won’t be in charge. A ‘collaborative structure’ is business speaking when you say that business takes precedence.

The impression is certainly that it will be mainly Boehly and Eghbali who will take the lead, assisted by co-sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart. Maresca’s way down the food chain.

Looking at some of the other talent available, including strong characters like former Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel and ex-Brighton manager Roberto De Zerbi, it seems Maresca has been hired for his malleability and his coaching skills.

Beyond that coaching ability, however, the way his appointment is being discussed gives the sense that his main quality is that he won’t rock the boat. That seems like a strange premise to make Chelsea a force in the game again.

On the other hand, when you have an owner like Eghbali, who likes to pop into the dressing room every now and then and you have a group of people above you in the pecking order, you know your place will be crucial.

It’s hard to imagine Pochettino, De Zerbi or Tuchel accepting such a submissive role, but perhaps that just means Maresca is more suited to being a consensus politician at the club’s training ground in Cobham.

As for the five-year contract, you’ll have to excuse me because I’m cynical about that too. I only have one hat and I love it. I don’t wear hats, but I’ll eat it if Maresca sees that five-year contract.

I would be surprised if he makes it to two years. My best guess is that he will make it through the next season. So perhaps Chelsea’s owners are feeling excessively generous. Maybe they feel overly optimistic. Or perhaps there are a large number of termination clauses included in that contract.

After all, Boehly and Eghbali have had five permanent and interim managers since they bought the club two years ago. When you go through that many marriages, you’re sure to learn a few lessons.

I hope Maresca succeeds. I hope he succeeds, for himself and for the Chelsea fans. But the reality is that he is not nearly as well qualified as his three full-time predecessors, Tuchel, Graham Potter and Pochettino, to understand Chelsea.

Maresca’s frontline experience comes after a season in Serie B with Parma, where he was put in charge of Manchester City’s Elite Development Squad, and a season in the Championship with Leicester, when the odds were heavily in his favor. were because of the team he played for. inherited.

He has worked with Pep Guardiola, which is almost as important these days as fitting into a ‘collaborative structure’. There are legions of managers who bask in the reflected glory of being Pep’s mate.

None of this is to say that Maresca isn’t a capable manager. His Leicester team played great football in the Championship and deserved to become champions. But is it really a preparation for taking over a club like the current Chelsea?

The club has become the Premier League’s poster child, a byword for misplaced complacency and endless hubris, saddled with an owner whose idea of ​​recruitment strategy has yielded little more than a £1 billion supermarket trolley.

At this point it’s worth saying that respected voices within the sport, men like Simon Jordan and Peterborough United owner Darragh MacAnthony, identify many of what they admire about Chelsea’s new business model and that they are people who deserve it is to be listened to.

I still have trouble seeing it. It wasn’t until the end of the season that Pochettino began to understand the increase in signings being dumped at the club and so it was naturally at that point that Chelsea let him go.

Sometimes clubs thrive on churn, but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that what Chelsea needed more than anything this summer was a respite from the constant turmoil. Finally they were making progress. They needed some continuity.

Instead, they appointed someone new and emasculated him before he even starts, appointing him as head coach and not manager. They start again. Many reports suggest that the players are baffled by Pochettino’s treatment.

Neutrals around the world will wish Maresca the best of luck, certain he will need it.

Terzic shows grace in defeat

I mentioned last week how I was struck by the generosity of Southampton’s Jack Stephens at the end of his side’s victory over Leeds in the Championship play-offs.

This week it was difficult not to notice the grace of Borussia Dortmund coach Edin Terzic’s defeat. Long after his side’s loss to Real Madrid in the Champions League final, Terzic walked around the pitch and congratulated the Madrid side on their victory.

He even visited the parents of Jude Bellingham, who played for him at Dortmund, to congratulate them.

And even though this threatens to contradict the habit of a lifetime, there is still praise for José Mourinho. The Portuguese, who was at Wembley as a pundit, approached Terzic after the match and embraced him in a long, comforting hug. It was a classy gesture from one of the management greats.

Burrow is one of the greatest sports heroes

I never had the honor of meeting Rob Burrow. I never even saw him play.

And so it is a tribute to the second act of his remarkable life that he will forever remain in my memory as one of the greatest sporting heroes.

His courage in the face of his diagnosis of motor neurone disease and the example he set as he continued his life exemplified a kind of courage that left me in awe of the man.