Maresca-ball; a study of training

Dominic Wells
8 min readJul 10, 2023

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TITLE IMAGE: Jamie Vardy (left) and new Leicester City boss, Enzo Maresca (right)

I wanted to provide an article that looks for potential insights into Enzo Maresca’s style of play. With only 14 professional managerial games to his name, finding footage of his Parma team in Serie B, and the Manchester City U23s isn’t easy — in fact, I haven’t managed to find any.

Thankfully, Leicester City have been releasing snippets of training to start pre-season, accessible via their official website, YouTube, or Twitter. After watching, I found a few takeaways that I wanted to turn into an article. Yes, these will be fairly speculative, and the findings will be generalised from a small sample size of footage. But I’m giving myself an exception to create this piece, due to the abnormality of his career to date.

Above, I’ve linked the first source material.

To make an educated guess, I would suggest the structure of a team's initial training sessions under new management will focus on the basic principles — in and out of possession — that they want to implement on their team. Because of this, it will be easier to notice Maresca’s input and that is further justification that scrutiny of this footage can act as a clue for the playing style next season.

The format of this article will consist of mini headlines, providing time stamps of the linked footage if people want a video description and a short synopsis of the point I will make. These will be followed by a more detailed description of how I think these situations/exercises in training will translate onto the pitch.

[0:16–0:28]: Position rotations, and familiarising players with multiple variations

A fairly important core principle for Maresca seems to be players rotating positions within a possession sequence. To ensure there is comfort in doing so, the players are instructed to pass and receive from a multitude of angles and roles within a sequence. The end of this process is always to centre the ball, as the final action, into the “#9” as stated by Maresca himself.

I think the drill also highlights the basic structure for progression. A general idea in football is that progression is easier by finding diagonal passes through the opponent’s structure. This is because it’s harder for opposition defenders to use their “cover shadow” (space directly behind them) to mitigate passes beyond them.

IMAGE 1: A mock shape for Leicester & an opponent. The idea is to show the “in-to-out” passing network and the relevance of diagonal angles.

The above image shows two key concepts in a mock match format. Firstly, the prevalence of diagonal passing lanes to aid progression (highlighted as #1, #2, and #3), but also the “in-to-out” passing system that is revolutionising modern football.

Popularised by the likes of Pep Guardiola and Roberto Di Zerbi, both of which have been referenced as influences on Maresca’s philosophy, you can create “artificial transitions” by baiting the opposition players to press the backward pass in a sequence — highlighted as #2, and then playing vertically through the vacated space (#3), in this situation into the #10.

A key component of this passing network/system is that all of the passing angles naturally form in the eye line of the receiving player. There isn’t a requirement to pivot, scan, or turn upon reception. Instead, you play the way you’re facing, which results in simpler passes and a higher success rate of execution.

[0:56–1:14]: Communication through passing

A concept that I think is massively underappreciated by fans is how each pass can communicate an idea to the recipient. It’s part of a player's sub-conscience, those who play (even casually) will execute passes in this fashion without realising. You will adjust the temperament of the pass; power, spin, and weighting, all to articulate what the recipient should do with their next action.

A faster pass may indicate that you want the receiver to let the ball run across their body into an area of “space”. Whilst a slower pass might suggest the recipient should execute an action with their first touch. It’s very basic, but let me explain this importance further.

Throughout last season, Leicester City struggled to communicate through their passing connections. Instead, they were victims of mishitting the ball, either putting too much power into a pass or leaving it short and open for an interception. They’d also misplace passes, both wayward and resulting in a turnover or simply passing to a left-footed player on their weaker right side. These intrinsic issues caused problems in possession for the Foxes.

Within the training footage, Ricardo Pereira appears to be receiving possession as an advanced option on the right side and is being instructed to “play with tempo” in the final third. The coaches are emphasising the need to pass into his stronger foot, to mitigate a need for a controlling touch, or reduce error by forcing him to play first-time on his left.

Passing with an intended purpose, or communicating an idea to the recipient, is a component of Maresca’s playing style. I expect the players to be more execution-heavy, precise, and purposeful with the ball — which, in the final third will feel refreshing.

[1:15–1:38]: Spatial awareness of the “free”/between-the-lines player

In this exercise, Harvey Barnes and Harry Winks are tasked with playing on both teams in possession. This role means they have to constantly find pockets of space to create an overload for the ball-holding team.

The difficulty in this role stems from the small pitch size, and that if there’s a pocket of space, both players will gravitate towards it. Maresca clearly asks for them to stagger their positioning between the lines, and this is representative of how he wants his attacking players to hold different vertical spaces.

Below I’ve provided two mock in-game examples. The first is how I’d deem the “incorrect” way to stagger positioning between the lines — focusing on the area outlined with a box. Whereas the second is, in my opinion, “correct”. The premise is to provide the ball player with as many options in possession as possible, if you don’t stagger correctly, you can block passes into other players on your team by occupying a singular space with two players.

IMAGE 2: The “incorrect” positioning of midfielders to receive from CBs. IMAGE 3: The “correct” positioning of midfielders to receive from CBs.

This principle is further illustrated in the next training ground snippet, “Pre-Season Ball Movement”. In this video, there’s special attention to how Leicester City wanted to build possession sequences from the back, looking at the perspective of the centre-backs playing through the midfield and finishing in the final third.

[0:07–0:44]: Build-up structure through CBs

I will talk about the staggering of positioning later, but I saw an interesting tweak in the first pass from the centre-backs. Under Brendan Rodgers, this pass would originally progress by going into the full-back and then inside to the midfield pivot. The idea now is to find the pivot straight from the CBs, before then optimising the “in-to-out” system to progress the ball.

IMAGE 1: Using the “in-to-out” structure as a reference point.

In the first example (starting at 0:08), you can see Conor Coady pass into the midfield (#1), as Ricardo Pereira inverts (& underlaps the receiving player) to receive pass #2, and then he passes forwards into an advanced midfielder or forward (#3).

[1:04–1:20]: Better angles to see Pereira inverting to receive pass #2

[0:24–0:34]: Staggering the advanced receivers

Referencing IMAGES 2 and 3, you can see how this works and doesn’t work in practice. For this example, the ball is in the depth of the pitch, and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall is positioned high, as the midfielder close to the #9 — Jamie Vardy. When the ball is available to progress, Vardy drops to link play to feet, and Dewsbury-Hall adjusts his positioning to the left.

IMAGE 4: A visual depiction of the training exercise, with shape + pass. The structure for the opponent is a projection of how the opposition could line up versus Leicester City.

This unlocks a pass diagonally into the left half-space (and into Dewsbury-Hall), which could transition the possession sequence down the left side of the pitch. However, in this example, the ball (off-screen) advances on the right, but due to the good associative positioning and staggering between the lines, the attacking sequence is fluid, quick, and unpredictable.

Movement on the left ≠ attack down the left.

It also indicates that the principles in the building sequence, such as the “in-to-out” network, and players coming underneath the ball to support, also translate to the attacking third. For me, this is clear evidence that Maresca places a high level of importance on building, progressing, and keeping the ball in this manner.

[1:38–2:16]: Indicating a back three building shape?

As a brief side point, and purely speculating here so don’t read too much into this, but looking at the general structure of the exercise, Leicester City appears to be building in a back three shape. If this is true, it also places Marc Albrighton as the right wing-back, Ricardo Pereira seems to operate as a midfielder (in possession), and Benjamin Nelson as the left centre-back.

The shape of the squad Maresca is building seems to be leaning away from using traditional wingers, in part due to a shortage of availability in profiles there. But, also to maximise the ability of the wing-backs. There’s also the addition of Conor Coady, who thrives inside of a back three, adding an extra CB to a fairly extensive list of players capable of representing the side from that position.

This doesn’t entirely mean that the Foxes will start in a back three, nor will they defend in that shape. As a lot of my work spoke on last season, Leicester City defended in a 4–4–2 formation, but never attacked within that structure. However, if you field three CBs, it’s harder to find rotations to adjust between formations, unless people actually believe Conor Coady — who emerged as a #6/DM for Liverpool over twelve years ago — is going to reignite his midfield career.

For me, that ship has sailed. While I hope Maresca floats gracefully at the helm, guiding Leicester City back in the right direction. If there are any further ideas/speculation I can find from training footage or even the first few games of pre-season, I will probably make an article on them. Until then, up the Foxes!

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