Maresca becomes second most expensive Premier League manager ever behind Chelsea predecessor | OneFootball

Enzo Maresca was already one of the most expensive Premier League managers ever before his treachery landed Chelsea some absurd compensation.

Chelsea really should know by now to never trust a cheater.

Even in an age when transfer fees continue to escalate, it is rare for Premier League clubs to put much money aside to acquire the manager they feel best equipped to pull it all together. These are the most expensive coaches in English top-flight history.

Brendan Rodgers – £6m

Swansea felt £5m was “suitable compensation” for “such a talented, young British manager” and three members of his backroom staff when Liverpool came calling in 2012.

Seven years later, Chris Davies and Glen Driscoll again jumped ship with Rodgers for Leicester, but the addition of first-team coach Kolo Toure understandably brought the overall package closer to £10m for a frustrated Celtic.

The appointment of Rodgers alone cost the Foxes £6m as they quickly identified and secured their main target to replace the sacked Claude Puel in February 2019. It immediately felt like a potentially bounteous union and for a long while proved as such.

Rodgers extended his contract before the year was out, with his first two full seasons culminating in almighty bottlings of Champions League qualification after vague threats of title challenges.

There was silverware in the form of the FA Cup and consecutive European campaigns only look more impressive the further Leicester in their current guise spiral out of control.

But it ultimately ended in relegation heartbreak, with Rodgers sacked shortly before a drop into the Championship. The manager was due a pay-off of around £10m but is thought to have foregone some of that payment. Being replaced by Dean Smith does that to a man.

Thomas Frank – £6.7m

After close to a decade of overperformance with Brentford, Frank embraced “a little bit more risk in my daily life” by taking on that most unique of challenges: a Spurs side which had won a trophy.

The Dane did make life considerably harder with an Arsenal obsession which came to define his eight-month tenure in north London.

Suffice to say, Spurs spent more getting rid of Frank than they did procuring him.

Ruben Amorim – £9.25m

There was a similar sense with Amorim that Manchester United might have found a perfect match; that feeling lasted about a fortnight.

Amorim had been on the Old Trafford radar for months, including through the hilariously bungled backing and sacking of Erik ten Hag, but it was decided that one final summer transfer window of recruiting at great expense more players specifically wanted by the Dutchman and entirely incompatible with his eventual successor was the best and indeed only possible course of action for a club which believes free lunches, charity work and employing non-footballers to be the problem.

Sporting paid about £8m to release Amorim from his Braga contract after just 13 games in charge in March 2020 and it was a masterstroke: he transformed the Lisbon club to the extent that they won two Primeira Liga crowns after an almost two-decade drought, while putting them on course for a third before his departure.

Manchester United wasted £21.4m on replacing Ten Hag with Amorim in November 2024 after threatening/promising the Portuguese that the opportunity to manage them would not come around again.

Having spent his entire reign explaining in unnecessarily public and painstaking detail precisely how incompetent he believes himself, his players and the club which has helped torch his burgeoning reputation to be, it is easy to imagine he might regret not calling their bluff.

Jason Wilcox ultimately called Amorim’s bluff, with a £16m pay-off to boot.

Arne Slot – £9.4m

“Everybody understands Feyenoord will want to receive as much money as they can get, but I get the feeling that they will not begrudge me this move,” said Slot when it became clear that, through the noise surrounding Amorim and Xabi Alonso, he would be handed the Jurgen Klopp dynasty.

The Eredivisie runners-up were perfectly satisfied with a £7.7m fee and £1.7m in add-ons which might well have been triggered over the course of a Premier League-winning debut season. Liverpool, too, were content with their succession plan initially.

But a far more difficult second album presented at least 20 reasons why Slot had to be handed a compensation package of around £7m.

Enzo Maresca – £10m

Leicester were ‘disappointed’ when Maresca ‘decided at this stage that he no longer wants to be part of our vision’; that was a kinder way to put a perceived betrayal than Chelsea managed.

The Italian recognised that his stock was high after winning the Championship title; he understandably chose to cash in when the Blues made an approach for a coach they hilariously incorrectly felt would be more malleable to their unique operations and machinations.

A £10m bill delivered not only Maresca but six members of his Leicester staff to Stamford Bridge, which seemed like remarkably shrewd recruitment when the Blues marched to second in the Premier League table around Christmas.

The wheels on the bandwagon felt loose for months after but Maresca and his team managed to stabilise themselves, qualify for the Champions League and win the Europa Conference.

Then it all came crashing down when Maresca fluttered his eyelashes at Manchester City.

Andre Villas-Boas – £13.3m

With Carlo Ancelotti handed one of the harsher sackings in Premier League history, Chelsea felt it necessary to conduct an absurdly expensive experiment to deduce whether lightning could indeed strike twice.

The hypothesis was fair. The club’s greatest era was triggered in no small part by the prodigious brilliance of a young Portuguese manager who had just won the Treble with Porto. Jose Mourinho himself once referred to Villas-Boas as “my eyes and ears” so when the 33-year-old won the Primeira Liga, Europa League and Portuguese Cup, the comparison became unavoidably intoxicating.

Roman Abramovich certainly agreed, sanctioning what was a world-record compensation package for a manager he would spend about as much to sack within eight months, at least partly because he tried to make John Terry sit in economy.

‘Andre was the outstanding candidate for the job,’ the Blues said when appointing him. By the time he was dispensed with there was ‘disappointment that the relationship has ended so early’ – and presumably so expensively.

Enzo Maresca – £17m

A masterpiece of club statementery, from the capitalisation of ‘Badge’ to the refusal to use Maresca’s name at any point, the swipe at the Italian while praising their new manager, and Actual Chelsea saying ‘no club wants to change its head coach midway through a season’.

Graham Potter – £21.5m

It was presumed that Chelsea’s financially incontinent revolving door managerial policy would end with Abramovich’s ownership, but Clearlake ensured to honour that proud history with their first appointment.

Thomas Tuchel was soon shown the door Potter would be invited through thanks to his work at Brighton. As ever, the Seagulls were fully prepared for such an eventuality and guaranteed they would be reimbursed for their troubles.

Roberto De Zerbi was already in place as Potter’s replacement when it was revealed that Chelsea’s latest direct debit payment to Brighton amounted to just over £21m for the manager and five of his backroom team.