I say this entirely respectfully as someone who has the utmost respect for the Championship, a league I have covered more than any other over the past 15 years. But it seems a bit weird that Enzo Maresca, Kieran McKenna and Vincent Kompany have been immediately linked with such big clubs having achieved nothing more significant than promotion from the Championship.
That was not the case even a couple of years ago: nobody was calling for Marco Silva, Scott Parker, David Wagner, Daniel Farke or Chris Wilder to go straight in at the likes of Manchester United or Chelsea.
Instead, managers like Brendan Rodgers and Graham Potter had to prove themselves in the Premier League by successfully establishing newcomers as mid-table sides. But things have changed now, and that intermediate step is seemingly no longer considered necessary.
Pep Guardiola's influence looms large in elite clubs' thinking
The dearth of obvious big names who are not considered busted flushes is probably one factor. Jose Mourinho, Louis van Gaal and Rafa Benitez’s generation seem as old hat now as Graham Taylor and Kenny Dalglish would have been in their era.
Another issue is that frankly, most those bosses who were previously seen as red-hot up-and-comers have already had a go in the Premier League and been deemed failures (by the clubs, even if not always their fans): Potter and Rodgers, for two, but also Andre Villas-Boas, Nuno Espirito Santo, Antonio Conte, Thomas Tuchel, Frank Lampard, and Mauricio Pochettino.
The vacancies at Liverpool, Chelsea, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and potentially Manchester United this summer have produced flummoxed shrugs from fans who cast an eye around Europe and see no obvious candidate who they are desperate to see at their own clubs.
The prevailing trend now, then, is for the European giants to look not at the present crop of names, but at candidates who they think represent the future of the game: coaches who have worked under big names as assistants and gone away to cut their teeth elsewhere, gaining just enough experience to suggest they are not complete lemons.
The Championship is a particularly fertile breeding ground at the moment. Maresca looks set to take the Chelsea job after leading Leicester City to promotion. McKenna was linked with Chelsea and his former club Manchester United, before seemingly deciding to stand by Ipswich Town and lead them into the Premier League. Kompany is now being linked with Bayern Munich, despite being unable to get Burnley out of the bottom three last season.
Those with links to Pep Guardiola are particularly highly prized. Erik ten Hag was Guardiola’s B team manager at Bayern. Maresca and Mikel Arteta were his assistant managers at Manchester City, where Kompany also played under him. So too did Xavi at Barcelona – a club he has just left as manager. Even Ange Postecoglou can claim a more tenuous link: his former club, Yokohama F. Marinos, are part-owned by City Football Group.
It goes without saying, but it’s apparent from that just how esteemed Guardiola is within the game. Not since his own mentor, Johan Cruyff, has a coach been able to draw so many throughlines down to so many different managers who have taken inspiration from his tactics and methodology and implemented them successfully elsewhere – though Jurgen Klopp arguably runs him close.
Perhaps even more important to the big clubs’ current thinking is the effect Mikel Arteta’s success has had on clubs’ thinking.
Arsenal plucked Arteta from Guardiola’s side without any requirement for him to have cut his teeth elsewhere. Over the past five years, the Gunners have enjoyed a period of gradual but definite progress under his charge, to the point that he has mounted a pair of increasingly credible title challenges to his former club.
Now, everybody wants to find… if not quite the next Pep, yet, then at least the next Arteta.
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