As had been widely reported, interviews are underway for several positions in the management team. Feedback has been mixed, I understand all candidates did not convince they were required for the job.
While every agent in the game is throwing a name of two at the club, the field of serious candidates has narrowed from where we were a week ago.
My hunch, is that if the bookies favourite was getting the job, he would already be in place.
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HH
Bookies’ favourite.
Who is it today?
Who is the bookies favourite. It changes everyday!
The bookies’ favourite is in employment until Saturday evening at least.
Regardless of all the chat I think it will be Brendan ‘hearing our calling in the night’.
Not my personal choice and definitely not the cheaper option but it is my feeling as to how this will go.
Happy Friday friends!
Took a while but we got here.
GEEBEE1978 on 9TH JUNE 2023 12:07 PM
The bookies’ favourite is in employment until Saturday evening at least.
Ange was in employment while his head was half way down the M1
GLENDALYSTONSILS on 9TH JUNE 2023 12:11 PM
I get that. My comment was a reply to Paul67 suggested that if the favourite was getting the job, he’d already be here.
I fancy a leftfield, not in the picture, management candidate with an associated arrival of Sporting Director for continuity kind of thing.
The really good ones join the the EPL bandwagon at end of year 2 (and we should build a bloody contract that heavily dings those leaving in the mid-season night).
With Champions league booty at the end of next season growing, we need to win next season’s league. We need also to build a long term strategy that doesn’t rely on the one true king at the helm, a risk we carried still with Ange.
Time for some vision board.
HH
“I understand all candidates did not convince they were required for the job”.
In which case it’s better the devil you know and we appoint Rogers. He’ll get the job done, but we keep looking and if/when a better candidate become available we dump him like a sack of spuds.
Simples. Revenge is always a dish best served cold.
Maresca won’t be officially interviewed till after the final so is this a hint that he will be the new manager?
However he is favourite for the job so P67 is more than hinting that he won’t be getting it.
“I understand all candidates did not convince they were required for the job.”
I’m confused.
No candidate was convincing? Is that what you mean? Yet the field of serious candidates has narrowed?
🤷♂️
GEEBEE1978 on 9TH JUNE 2023 12:14 PM
Yes ,gotcha .
Mine was more to do with the fact that , if it is to be Maresca , he will likely know about it now .
Just as Ange knew he was heading to Spurs before the SC final .
I have no idea who it wil be , and bookies favourites don’t even give us a rough guide .
Some rubbish being spouted today.Its Maresca.But then again.it could be,?????????????.
Better just to wait and seeReally.
Scott Brown with Jonny Hayes
Who is doing the interviewing? Hopefully someone who properly knows football is involved.
if we considering the Man City side kick we would be better to offer it to JK
Stewart Baxter seen in Weatherspoons , Pakhead Forge
RC,
JK @ Celtic – 10 games with 4 wins, 4 draws & 2 losses. 40% win ratio.
EM @ Parma – 14 games with 4 wins, 5 draws & 4 losses. 29% win ratio.
They both suck when it comes to stats.
Next !!!
HH
from the Times by Mark Palmer, behind a paywall so C+Pasted:
Enzo Maresca
Which side would be taking the bigger gamble should Celtic appoint Enzo Maresca as their new manager? For the Scottish Treble winners, there would be clear risk in backing a rookie coach before a season in which the stakes will be heightened by the forthcoming expansion of the Champions League.
Maresca, meanwhile, could very well be a European champion and Treble winner in his own right by the time he puts his head on the pillow in Istanbul in the early hours of Sunday morning. As trusted lieutenant to the world’s best manager, Pep Guardiola, the 43-year-old Italian has a key strategic role at Manchester City. It is an important job — one he loves, by all accounts — that carries little of the external scrutiny he could expect in Glasgow.
And yet, the story of Maresca’s career, as both player and coach, is one of running towards, not away from, new challenges. Fulvio Fiorin, who has known and worked with him for more than three decades, expects a similar mindset to inform Maresca’s thought process if he is indeed offered the chance to succeed Ange Postecoglou once the Champions League final is done and dusted.
“He’s an ambitious guy desperate for growth, and people like that don’t stay in their comfort zone,” said Fiorin, who boasts an excellent reputation in Italy as a coaching methodology expert and held various roles in the AC Milan youth set-up before working with the first team as an assistant to Filippo Inzaghi.
“Even someone like Pep Guardiola could have spent his whole life at Barcelona, but he didn’t want to stay in his comfort zone and so he left to grow and improve elsewhere. If you’re in a good job and a nice situation, you can say, ‘Right, that’s me for life’, but if you have ambition and desire for growth, that’s not what you do.
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“I haven’t spoken to Enzo specifically about Celtic, but I do know that he has that ambition, that desire to stretch himself and improve. He is someone who accepts challenges.
“For sure, not everyone has the courage to go and work at a club like Celtic, but I don’t believe Enzo would shy away from it. Looking back on my own experience of going to Celtic with Milan under Inzaghi, I found the whole atmosphere and climate around the club absolutely fabulous. When you hear all those fans sing, it must be a brilliant stimulus to say, ‘Right, this is where I want to be.’ ”
Guardiola values Maresca, who coached City Under-23 after his stint as an assistant to Guardiola
Guardiola values Maresca, who coached City Under-23 after his stint as an assistant to Guardiola
JASON CAIRNDUFF/REUTERS
Fiorin first encountered Maresca when he was a boy — a 10-year-old kid freshly arrived from his home town of Pontecagnano Faiano near Salerno in Italy’s deep south. On a good day, it’s an eight-hour drive from there to Milan, where Maresca had been brought to hone his skills at a club that had recently won back-to-back European Cups under Arrigo Sacchi.
Also among the intake at that time were Fabrizio Miccoli, who would go on to play for Juventus and Italy, and Roberto De Zerbi, a sprightly attacking midfielder now forging a reputation as one of the brightest tactical minds in the Premier League through his work at Brighton & Hove Albion.
“In those days, bringing the boys in so young was something the federation allowed you to do because Milan guaranteed board, lodgings and school arrangements,” Fiorin explained. “That changed further down the line, but I can still clearly remember Enzo coming in as such a little kid. He was considered a real talent, and it was immediately apparent that he had something more than the average 10-year-old who plays football.
“He was rated for his already strong technical skills but above all for his capacity to observe and make good decisions. He has always been such an intelligent boy. Especially when his team is in possession, Enzo has always been good at making the right decisions.
“If someone was good technically, it was assumed that they had good prospects. But for me, the player with truly good prospects has always been the one that makes good decisions, and Enzo has always been that guy. He was just a kid back then, but in the way he played, he showed his already strong understanding of how to play and how to make good decisions. Those are the qualities that allowed him to reach such a high level as a player.”
There was no shame in failing to make a first-team breakthrough at a club littered with midfield talent. Maresca accepted an opportunity to head to England with West Bromwich Albion, before moving back to Italy and Juventus, with whom he played at Celtic Park in a 4-3 Champions League defeat in October 2001.
Pellegrini, right, with Maresca, left, in the West Ham dugout
Pellegrini, right, with Maresca, left, in the West Ham dugout
MARC ATKINS/GETTY IMAGES
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There were loan spells at Bologna and Piacenza and a season at Fiorentina, before Maresca embarked on a four-year stint in Spain with Sevilla. He won two Uefa Cups in Andalucia, the second of them coming at Hampden with a win over Espanyol in the final.
He had a season-long Greek stint at Olympiakos prior to returning to La Liga with Malaga, where he developed a close bond with the then manager Manuel Pellegrini. Maresca finished his playing days back home, turning out for Sampdoria, Palermo and finally Verona.
“People who aren’t scared of change, of trying new experiences, who aren’t scared of growing and getting better, they are the ones who succeed in this game,” Fiorin said. “Enzo has always had that mentality — he has never been scared of these things. Pellegrini is a very good coach who follows a more traditional view of the game, but that was still a very important part of Enzo’s formation, both as a player and a coach.
“You know what it means to have played in Italy, Spain, Greece, England: all different experiences in terms of attitude, mentality, training methodology. All these things are really important in one’s formation. The person who has seen the whole room will always have grown more than the one who has always stayed in a small corner of it.
“As a coach, Enzo expressed the same thing. He travelled around, formed himself through a variety of experiences. He’s a man who reads a lot, tries to be educated, cultured and always improving. That is what gives him a great chance, in my opinion, of becoming a real top-level coach.”
Maresca’s first dugout gig was as assistant to Fiorin at Ascoli Serie B. The pair took charge in the summer of 2017 and by the November Maresca had already resigned, apparently not on account of the team being bottom of the table, but personality clashes with the club’s senior management. Short-lived as the chapter proved, it is interesting to note that it was De Zerbi who helped broker it.
“I did my Uefa Pro License course with Roberto, a player I had brought to Milan, and one of the first people we spoke about was Enzo,” Fiorin recalled. “Roberto, like Enzo, recognised a long time ago that you can’t just settle for the experiences you’ve had and think you know football — you have to be always thinking about what football will be a few years from now.
Maresca won the Uefa Cup in 2007 at Hampden
Maresca won the Uefa Cup in 2007 at Hampden
KENNY RAMSAY
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“Speaking to De Zerbi about Enzo, that’s when I reconnected with him. He said he needed someone alongside him who could help him understand certain things and this chance came up at Ascoli to work together. The general manager at Ascoli had also been the general manager at Palermo when Enzo played there.
“The experience, unfortunately, went badly, fundamentally due to cultural issues at the club. We were doing well, especially considering the level of the team and squad. We deserved to have some patience from the club but on the inside of the club, and outside with the media and the fans, there was always something going on.
“What I will say is that if you go back and watch the football that Ascoli played that year, you’ll say, ‘F***, they were playing some great stuff’. Maresca had his fallouts with people at the club and moved on, but I stayed on before being sacked myself by the sporting director who probably didn’t share mine and Enzo’s way of thinking about the game.
“Our task was to avoid relegation and I’m still convinced we would have achieved it. There was a clear growth in the team and the performances. Unfortunately, sometimes in football there are too many things that can influence the environment to the point where you can’t carry forward what you want to do.”
Almost immediately, Vincenzo Montella, the former Italy striker, took Maresca to Sevilla as his assistant. Pellegrini then brought him to West Ham as his second assistant and sometimes delegated matches for him to prepare both on the training pitch and in terms of overall approach.
Maresca’s next port of call on what Fiorin describes as a “brilliant journey of formation” was as Manchester City Under-23 coach. Winning the Premier League 2 title helped bring him to the attention of Parma, who appointed him as manager in May 2021. Again, the experience lasted barely six months, but once more Fiorin is adamant that context must be applied to this apparent failure.
Maresca arrived in Emilia Romagna at a time when new American ownership was just taking root. He was one of five different managers appointed between August 2020 and June 2022, some of them polar opposites which does not exactly suggest a clear and coherent strategy. Recruitment also appears to have been a mess, with several of these men letting it be known that they had ended up with players that they neither requested nor had any plan for.
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“What he experienced there, the issues he faced at the club, makes me think it would be wrong to judge Maresca the manager based on what he did at Parma,” Fiorin insisted. “I know him well and know how much he is worth, how good he is and how far he can go. In terms of public opinion and the media, if you don’t really know the person, of course you’re going to judge him purely on the basis of those results. But at this point I’d ask, ‘How many managers haven’t had immediate success then gone on to show themselves to be top drawer?’
“[Luciano] Spalletti never won [in Italy] before Serie A with Napoli this year, playing a terrific brand of football. How many times had he failed before? Antonio Conte in his first few years as well. It didn’t go well for Enzo at Parma, but also there was no patience. If you go and look at the club in those years, the results achieved by all the managers were similar. They didn’t achieve promotion.
“The club wanted instant results and when it didn’t happen, it was: ‘Enzo out, next one in.’ This pattern repeated itself several times with different coaches.”
As you would expect from a coach whom Guardiola prizes, Maresca’s vision of the game is based on pace, precision, invention and control. Fiorin also believes him to be both flexible and driven by a fierce desire for success.
“You can have a style that you want to play, but it has to be about how you play in order to win. That’s what counts, and Enzo understands that. When we started [at Ascoli], we had the idea of a 4-2-3-1, but nowadays, the good coach is not the one who identifies only with one system of playing. The good coach knows how to play with four at the back, three at the back, can change in response to what’s happening in the match, doesn’t have fixed ideas.
“If you say, ‘I only play a 4-2-3-1’, what if the four defenders aren’t good enough? What if they don’t respond to you? Do you just carry on regardless? The good coach has principles with regards to when the team is in possession, out of possession and in transition, but has no problem saying, ‘Right, we need to switch to a back three for this match’. Enzo in the course of his growth as a coach has used different systems which has been absolutely right and proper thing to do.
“He now knows how to express his style of football in a number of different systems and formations. And nowadays, it’s not a matter of dividing players into defenders, midfielders and strikers. Now it’s all about function: constructors, finishers. That’s how football has evolved. Look at how many players Guardiola has changed their role. Midfielders become wingers, defenders become midfielders. That’s what you have to do if you want to become a top-level coach.
“Like Enzo, Roberto De Zerbi expresses a football and a way of thinking about the game that is linked to continual evolution and growth. Independent of whether they achieve results or not, they know this gives them the best chance.
“You can train and prepare the team well, play a positive brand of football and still end up with certain situations in the environment that don’t allow you to reach the things [success and trophies] that could rubber stamp the value of what you are doing.
“It could be that you rub up against the sporting director or the head of football, who then influences what you are trying to do with the group. Then if the results don’t arrive, in certain cultures, the club, the directors, the fans want to change everything, get rid of the manager, even when it’s not really been his fault.
“For me, the whole concept of good football, creating a team that fans want to come to the stadium to watch, is based on certain scientific principles. You don’t just say, I want my team to play positive football. You have to work out how to train them, how you’re going to build a game and an identity. Work out how to empower the talented players you have at your disposal to produce performances that in turn produce results. This is how Enzo Maresca works.”
All the balanced pre-appointment preamble in the SMSM about any candidate will go out the window as soon as he’s appointed. As always they’ll accentuate the negative and look to pile on the pressure from day 1.
The last line about the bookies favourite hinges on when p67 wrote this piece. Up until yesterday afternoon the bookies favourite was BR.
It would be an act of self harm were this Club to appoint a candidate like Maresca over Brendan Rodgers.
AN DÚN @ 12:50 PM,
Brendan Rodgers is under contract to Leicester City until July, so he wouldn’t be in place yet if he was choosen.
Hail
JIMMY BONES:
Thanks for that.
Imagine if we end up with a better coach than Postecoglou, and that Spurs could have had him as well :)) Oh how I hope so! por cierto
Given the speculation, Maresca with Paul Lambert and Darren O’Dea….we could do with a shake up,I still hope it’s Rodgers, but I dont think he will come back.
I genuinely understand folks’ apprehension about employing Maresca, but just cast your mind back 2 years ago, jeez oh, this place was on fire!! No matter who comes in we’ll do what we do and get behind him and give him our full support for the journey, por cierto
As this is a Celtic blog, it is perfectly normal to discuss who our our next manager may be.
Is that not the rationale of a blog ?
We will get our next manager that much is certain. But who will his backroom team be. ?
Will he take his own or will the current team be part of any deal.
Time to make your mind up GS, JK , HK et al.
HH.
https://icdn.thecelticstar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/imago0044666153h-682×1024.jpg
https://icdn.thecelticstar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/imago0044714208h-683×1024.jpg
Yes they all did their job, but Ange ,Brendan ans Martin will by me be remembered as the thirty pieces of silver managers And as much as we wish Ange the best I think he will fall into the category of the other two bit of success then bumped.
Chairbhoy on 9th June 2023 12:56 pm
AN DÚN @ 12:50 PM,
Brendan Rodgers is under contract to Leicester City until July, so he wouldn’t be in place yet if he was choosen.
Hail
—
I hope so mate, this Maresca talk is giving me Lennon in the Hampden showers vibes.
Zheng Zhi is a manager now😎
We will get who we are given.
End of.
I will not be writing them off, nor will I be idolising them. They need to earn both of those reactions.
An exchange on the previous thread piqued my interest.
Many things can make us unhappy and an apparently unrelated event can trigger an unhappy memory.
There’s a specific recurring example on here going back years.
– Celtic get bad news (defeat in a game or manager resigns)
– After a swirl of opinions – Peter Lawwell gets the blame
– After a further swirl of opinions – John McGinn gets a mention
I was actually in the Villa offices when he signed.
His family were there – individual heavies held each of them at gunpoint in full view of John !
One other heavy had John in a necklock while another gripped his right wrist and a third prised a pen into his right hand.
Directly across the table sat Ernst Stavro Blofeld smirking and stroking a white cat.
His words chill me to this day.
“The choice to sign is entirely yours John”
Spare a thought for the poor lad.
He just had to sign for the other team.
🤔🤔🤔
You have a career firstly as a footballer, then you get coching badges at a young age, then you progress from youth levels to b teams and then first team coach and then assistant to 3 different managers, all of whom speak highly of your abilities and qualities, and that you should progress to first team management, two even want you to follow them to anothee league at a higher level …………..
but but but, even with eperience of 1200 football matches in your life …………
you failed the big test, the final interview stage ……….
some people on the internet dont like you.
Neil Francis still available, treble winner, just saying.
🇮🇪💚👍
H H. Mick
That awkward moment when coaches jet in to Scotland to become the bookies new favourite.
There should be a list of who’s not on the bookies list
Good afternoon all from the Queens Park Cafe. A beautiful day in downtown Govanhill, perfect setting for a few cold beers 🍻.
Neil Francis …………
serial winning player, captain and manager.
wins 5 trophies, and leaves, Brandan comes in wins 7 trophies and leaves
Neil comes in and wins two more on a temporary basis.
Is appointed and wins 3 more …………
but but but some people to this day maintain he was the wrong appointment.
Imagine before we went for 10, if we had actually already stopped at 8,
anyways ,