When promotion-winning manager Enzo Maresca left for Chelsea, it was a big blow to Leicester City.
They had taken a risk in appointing a talented coach with limited management experience to stabilise the club and plot an immediate return to the Premier League after relegation. The gamble paid off.
However, it was Maresca’s philosophy and style of play that Leicester owner Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha became invested in as much as the man.
Inevitably, the search for his successor has meant Leicester have been searching for candidates of a similar ilk rather than going in a new direction.
They wanted to find another young, hungry coach who can build on the work Maresca has started in turning Leicester into a possession-based, modern team. After all, many of the squad have been recruited with Maresca’s model in mind, like Harry Winks and Mads Hermansen. The decision to give Jannik Vestergaard a new three-year contract, at Maresca’s request, was further evidence of their commitment to his playing style.
Inevitably then, the search for his successor has seen them consider candidates with a similar approach of playing out from the back and attempting to dominate the ball to control the game.
Leicester have spoken to dozens of candidates, to assess their availability, hunger for the job, and plans for what they would do with the squad Leicester are taking into the Premier League. Despite a limited transfer budget and expected points deduction for an alleged breach of profit and sustainability regulations, it remains an attractive job to many.
Three candidates have emerged as the front runners as Leicester enter the final stages of the process. Three candidates who come from different backgrounds but have shown in previous work they could share the same vision as Leicester.
Here we assess the main contenders, Graham Potter, Carlos Corberan and Steve Cooper.
Graham Potter
Leicester have been admirers of the Englishman for a very long time. They have always had a succession plan for previous managers and Potter has always featured prominently, but the timing has never previously been right.
It remains to be seen whether the timing is right on this occasion, but Potter is a coach who interests Leicester greatly.
He certainly plays a style that suits Leicester, forged over 16 years, starting in the northern Counties East League with Leeds Carnegie, then in Sweden with Ostersund before taking the hot seat at Swansea City, Brighton & Hove Albion and Chelsea.
Looking at his playing style wheel, which outlines how a side plays by condensing multiple metrics into an aesthetically pleasing graphic, from the 2021-22 season at Brighton, his preferred way to play is evident.
Playing style wheels break down Opta stats into four categories: defence, attack, possession and progression. They provide each side with a percentile rank compared to other teams in the top seven leagues in Europe. The higher the number, the more often — or successfully — a team performs that action.
Potter’s style was highly possession-based, focusing on playing out from the back, with a ‘deep build-up’ score of 68.
The Circulate metric score of 93 out of a possible 99 is particularly revealing because it means Brighton under Potter would often look to move the ball around and retain possession rather than play direct long balls into the final third.
This is also reflected when they do get into the final third as their patient attack metric, which measures the volume of shots taken per 100 attacking touches in the final third, is a high score of 94.
However, as their chance creation and shot quality were low, meaning that despite their dominance of possession and patient progression, they were a little blunt in the final third.
The 2021-22 season, when they finished ninth, one point behind Leicester, was the culmination of Potter’s three years of work.
This chart, detailing Brighton’s evolution under Potter across his 40 months at the helm before joining Chelsea at the beginning of the 2022-23 season, shows how his side evolved over those seasons, especially in circulation and their field tilt, which records their territorial dominance.
Potter’s style is clearly in line with Leicester’s vision.
Carlos Corberan
There are some obvious similarities between Maresca and Corberan. Both have been described as obsessed with football, an unfailing devotion to their philosophy of how the game should be played, early success as a coach at under-23 level, an ability to improve players and a link to Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola.
Corberan was a coach at Villareal in Spain when Pep Guardiola was turning Barcelona into a dominant force and he studied the methods of Juanma Lillo, who also inspired Guardiola.
Like Maresca, who was also Guardiola’s assistant at the Etihad Stadium, Corberan also stepped out of the shadow of a huge managerial figure, Marcelo Bielsa at Leeds United, who he assisted while also coaching the under-23s at Elland Road.
“I love to illuminate the game,” Corberan told The Athletic when he was Huddersfield Town manager in 2022. “Try to control games with the ball, try to keep the ball all the time, try to dominate.
“Of course, your ideas change over time, but when I analyse the behaviour of players I look for those who can illuminate the game.”
Looking at West Brom’s play style rankings from last season they were not an aggressive, pressing side, ranking 23rd out of 24 teams for passes per defensive action, allowing 16.5 passes before attempting to challenge, but they were the fifth-best side for stopping opposition shots.
Note that the table below shows league ranking, rather than percentile ranking above. Here, a lower ranking number denotes a higher volume action.
They ranked low for attacking speed, direct attacks and long passes, but were 11th for possession and 10th for field tilt, which measures territorial dominance. The rankings show they were a possession-based side but not particularly aggressive or fast going forward.
It is a slow, patient style of play that he occasionally tweaked by dropping a central midfielder into the back four against better sides.
One thing that stood out, and is supported by the data, is how defensively secure Albion were last season under him. He typically sets us out in a 4-2-3-1 with a pure holding midfielder and a more capable passer alongside him, and he prefers to tuck the full-backs in and maintain control against poorer teams, but they were also effective in transition.
Corberan plays a style that seems most similar to Maresca, if Leicester want a like-for-like replacement. And with more technically gifted players, he could be more adventurous.
Steve Cooper
If both Potter and Corberan have a clear philosophy and playing style like Maresca, Cooper’s isn’t as clear to define.
The Welshman forged his reputation with England’s youth teams before getting his first managerial chance at Swansea City, where he succeeded Potter.
His style was seen as more pragmatic and adaptable than the clear identity Potter’s Swansea possessed and although he took them to back-to-back play-offs, in the 2020-21 season when they were beaten in the final by Brentford, his side had the third-best defensive record, conceding just 39 goals in 46 games, but only scored 56.
In the following season, however, as he led Nottingham Forest to the play-off final, finally emerging victorious, his side scored 73, the third-highest total, while retaining a defensive stability, only conceding 40.
Against the odds, he kept Forest in the Premier League in 2022-23. But as their play style wheel from that campaign shows, they did so with very little possession, playing more of a counter-attacking style. With so many changes to his playing personnel, Forest played underdog football to survive, to suit the players he had at his disposal.
After promotion, he quickly realised that, if Forest tried to play the way he wanted them to, they would be relegated.
He wanted to be attack-minded and on the front foot, as they had been on their way to promotion. But after a few games, and a few heavy defeats, he realised that they needed to be more disciplined and organised with the players they had.
He changed his defensive approach to a low block and made Forest tough to beat. It wasn’t always pretty, but it got the job done. He always spoke about how he felt conflicted, because it went against the way he wanted football to be played. He wanted his teams to play, but felt he did not have the Premier League experience in his squad to do that. With more experienced players he could be more adventurous.
Cooper likes his teams to play with good organisation and structure, but that system can change depending on the circumstances and the players at his disposal.
One thing he has in common with Potter and Corberan is where his coaching passion comes from, with a Spanish and Barcelona influence. As a youth coach at Liverpool, he worked with Jose ‘Pep’ Segura and Rodolfo Borrell, who went on to assist Guardiola at Manchester City. Segura in particular was a big influence on Cooper.
From them, he learned to pay attention to detail, checking up on his players after training to ensure they were OK and insisting on learning everyone’s names around the club, to foster club unity.
Cooper, who didn’t like being an authority figure and didn’t like being called boss or gaffer, simply Coops or Steve, might not have shown a clear football philosophy but he appears to be a more pragmatic coach who would assess the Leicester squad and design a game plan to suit.
The merits of the playing styles of each candidate will be just one of the factors Leicester have to consider. It is now a question of which coach fits not only the long-term vision, but the unique challenges they will face back in the Premier League.
It is a decision Leicester have to get right.
Additional reporting: Mark Carey, Elias Burke and Paul Taylor
(Top photos: Getty Images)
