It’s not how or if Roberto De Zerbi will leave a club after he’s hired, but a matter of when. Having managed four clubs over the past eight years, the clock was already running when he was hired at Marseille in July 2024. The 46-year-old Italian has left enough bread crumbs by now that we can work backwards from the beginning: his sides will score beautiful team goals with intricate passing moves. There will be emotional press conferences following losses. It will end in personality clashes with players and executives. In January, Marseille president Pablo Longoria said that he wanted De Zerbi to have a long run at the club like Diego Simeone and Atletico Madrid. Less than three weeks later, the Italian was out following a 5-0 loss to PSG after less than two seasons.
Marseille did finish second in Ligue 1 behind PSG last season, scoring 74 goals in 34 matches-also the second-highest in the league (they gave up 47 goals, putting them around mid-table). We got our viral moments of De Zerbi-ball goals; we got footage of De Zerbi kicking midfielder Ismael Kone out of training for taking too many touches, telling him to “call his agent” for a transfer. Following a loss to Auxerre three months into his tenure, he reminded us that he talks directly because he was “from the street” and offered to resign and return his salary. It was the full De Zerbi experience on display: the football will be beautiful, his sides will give up goals, and there will be emotional collisions.
We’ve tracked his development since he entered the collective soccer consciousness with Sassuolo in 2018, back when he was elevated as the manager who would innovate attacking play in Serie A and push the league into a modern era. Set up in a distinctive 4-2-3-1 formation, his sides bridged the sport’s philosophical clash of possession versus counterattacking, fusing a style that included both contradictions. His technical midfield would artificially create transitions by baiting an opponent to press, thereby giving his wingers the space of a traditional counterattack. It was verticality with control, secure possession with the dynamism of wingplay.
De Zerbi’s style was distinguished by at least two clear technical requirements. His centerbacks are noted for putting their foot on the ball to control tempo and bait an opposition press. His sides attack down the middle of the field through an “S-pass combination” with the two base midfielders staggered to create diagonal angles, creating one-touch opportunities off half-turns from the centerback to the attacking midfielder that resemble the letter. Moises Caicedo and Alexis Mac Allister are the platonic ideal of a De Zerbi double pivot - mobile, secure, and quick with decision-making.
Detractors will point out that De Zerbi has won just one title in his career, a 2021 Ukrainian Super Cup with Shakhtar Donetsk. He may be what Jose Mourinho describes as a poet who doesn’t win titles, and maybe he is at his best punching up with mid-table clubs in the top four leagues. His Sassuolo sides finished eighth in his last two seasons with the club. Brighton finished sixth in his first year, only trailing Manchester City, Arsenal, and Liverpool in goals scored. Fittingly, De Zerbi would leave in the middle of the following season, with owner Tony Bloom admitting that if a “coffee machine was not working properly, I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised to see it on the lawn.”
Regardless, what De Zerbi lacked in trophies and ownership backing, he gained in admiration. Part of his perception owes to Pep Guardiola, who called him “one of the most influential managers in the last 20 years.”
“He changed the cuisine,” enthused Guardiola in comparing the manager to Spanish chef Ferran Adria.
Is De Zerbi doomed to be a manager who is most appreciated by his peers? Even Guardiola’s comments from just three years ago show how much the game has changed. The next De Zerbi wouldn’t necessarily be a manager, but a designer of set pieces.
Discussing De Zerbi in 2026 feels anachronistic in some sense. He is simultaneously cutting edge in his attacking but separate from the current modern focus on set pieces and restarts and multi-club ownership. He was linked with Manchester United before taking the Marseille job, a move that had potential for a historic meltdown with management. We still have a desire to see De Zerbi in the Premier League. So Tottenham then? Crystal Palace? Or maybe a club like Brighton was perfect for his approach - he could develop players and raise their transfer market value, be the street-wise underdog playing beautiful football, and collect the plaudits. Yet the one thing he has left to prove is not even winning, but just existing within the structure of a big club.
Did De Zerbi live up to the potential that we had for him in 2019? Without knowing any better, we would have predicted him for a move to Inter, Barcelona, Arsenal - a top four team in one of the top four leagues. But upon closer examination, he did exactly what was on the back of the box: he would change the way a team played, score a lot, concede a lot, develop some players, fall out with others, fall out with management, then leave by the second year. In that sense, he is as low risk a hire as there is.
Maybe De Zerbi’s role is to be the innovator but not the polisher, to introduce ideas from mid-table clubs that managers from global brands will shape into a Champions League-presentable product. He is the innovator’s dilemma of soccer. Measuring his impact with trophies would be missing the point.
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De Zerbi is the last of a tactical era, a reminder of when we were obsessed with build up play and the countless ways of progressing the ball from the back. He was the answer to what comes after Guardiola, which was all the control of the Spanish manager but with more verticality and directness. We were also still under the theory of great managers before they became usurped by the current metagame of multi-club ownership. And we’re very clear-eyed about what wins games today, regardless of aesthetics.
It might be obvious why the maverick managers we speak of are from the past, and why De Zerbi currently stands alone. Thus, the Italian’s significance within the 2026 footballing landscape is in his individualistic streak, standing apart from any wider system. In an era of efficiency and analytics, he is a reminder that the human - the personality with all its edges and emotions - will always be the bottleneck. De Zerbi has been like this since bursting onto the scene in 2019 at Sassuolo; the world moved on. Now, all the rough edges - the fallouts, the outbursts, the friction - are the meaning.