There is no better summation of Chelsea’s status as the Premier League’s wildest and weirdest Premier League club, and no clearer evidence they are the leading symbol of football’s private-equity takeover, than the precarious position of the head coach on the eve of the Club World Cup Final.
Chelsea could be crowned world champions on Sunday, giving Enzo Maresca his second trophy as manager to complete - along with Champions League qualification - a perfect treble in his debut year at Stamford Bridge.
And yet nobody can say with any confidence that Maresca is doing a good job, or even that he’ll still be in charge come winter.
That uncertainty is partly bred from the general vibe of the BlueCo business model with its smug, edgelord approach to tearing up convention in the pursuit of gaming the system.
The constant turnover of players creates a sense of permanent transience that must surely rub off on the coaching staff, too. From PSR mischief to profitable stasis Chelsea are a caricature of football’s ill health in 2025.
That presumably extends to faith and patience in the head coach.
But as if that wasn’t on-the-nose enough as a manifestation of modern football, there’s more, because the next phase of the Chelsea project could present another paradox and shine an even brighter light on all that’s gone wrong with the game.
Becoming world champions could be Chelsea’s downfall.
By Sunday’s final Chelsea will have played six competitive matches between June 20 and July 13, extending the 2024/25 campaign to an extraordinary 11 months. The next one begins, at home to Crystal Palace, in just five weeks.
“Maybe in November, December or January it will be a disaster, we are exhausted and the World Cup has destroyed us,” Pep Guardiola said shortly before Manchester City were knocked out in the quarter-finals.
“I don't know. It's the first time in our lives that this has happened.”
Maresca must be having similar concerns; must be wondering whether his entire project, ironically enough, could be “destroyed” by winning the World Cup.
The smart money says yes, it will.
The major complaint aimed at Maresca in 2024/25 was that Chelsea got worse as the season wore on. At their best, in autumn, when title-challenging form became the basis of an eventual fourth-place finish, Chelsea were still playing with Mauricio Pochettino’s expressive tactics in their muscle memory.
The more they took on the manager’s possession-centric tactics the more they began to disintegrate.
This does not bode well for a considerably more tiring 2025/26, in which Maresca is expected to compete with Arsenal, Liverpool, and Manchester City while also juggling Champions League football.
That’s a huge step change; last year’s qualified success in the Premier League was effectively achieved with free midweeks, considering Maresca had the luxury of changing his entire starting 11 for the Europa Conference League.
The likelihood of success was already low before the Club World Cup interruption. BlueCo have once again been busy this summer and have once again prioritised youth, preferring to stockpile assets rather than build towards a coherent vision.
Estevao, Jamie Gittens, Liam Delap and Joao Pedro all make sense individually, but what’s left is a surplus of attacking talent and very little in the way of leadership or experience.
Winning the Club World Cup could, theoretically, be a moment of maturation.
But we have no idea how seriously anyone is taking this tournament and how galvanising it can really be, and in all likelihood Paris Saint-Germain will comfortably beat a Chelsea side that has only faced one European side so far in the US, beating Benfica 4-1 in the group stage.
Far more likely, then, that Chelsea will continue to look muddled and loose, exhaustion only exacerbating qualities that have come to feel like an inevitable symptom of BlueCo’s manic transfer activity.
Getting Chelsea back into the Champions League was the easy bit. Expectations are much higher now, and yet Maresca must navigate the addition of competitive midweek matches – and straight off the back of a summer tournament that could have a catastrophic impact on player fitness.
He will do very well to survive another 12 months.
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