What next for Roberto De Zerbi? Marseille meltdown suggests ex-Brighton boss isn't cut out for elite-level management

To say that De Zerbi is held in high esteem by his peers would be putting it mildly. He's not so much respected as revered.

Pep Guardiola, for example, had been following De Zerbi with interest long before the former Sassuolo and Shakhtar Donetsk boss arrived in the Premier League and very quickly turned Brighton into one of the best teams to watch in Europe.

"Roberto is one of the most influential managers in the last 20 years," Guardiola gushed in May 2023. "There is no team playing the way they play, it's unique, like a Michelin-star restaurant.

"I had the feeling when he arrived that the impact he would have in the Premier League would be great – but I didn’t expect him to do it in this short space of time. His team creates 20 or 25 chances per game, better by far than most opponents, he monopolises the ball in a way it hasn't been for a long time. Brighton are one of the teams I try to learn a lot from."

Guardiola's great rival, Jurgen Klopp, was just as effusive in his praise of De Zerbi's Brighton, whom he admitted had made his Liverpool side look "silly" during a 3-0 loss at the Amex Stadium.

"I am a football lover and if somebody comes in and has the impact Roberto has on football," he said, "it should not be underestimated."

However, while De Zerbi made history at the end of the 2022-23 season by qualifying Brighton for Europe for the first time ever via a sixth-placed finish in the Premier League, he parted company with the club by mutual consent at the end of the following season due to an irreconcilable difference in opinion over player recruitment and a perceived lack of ambition.

"I didn't understand what the next step forward was," De Zerbi later told the Daily Telegraph. "And you can offer to double my salary, but if I can’t see a dream or goal to achieve, I can't give my all as I would like. I would lose motivation and a purpose I always had in football...

"This is why I decided to go and leave the club, even though unwilling, almost suffering."

On the plus side, De Zerbi was a man in demand. His work at Brighton had attracted the attention of the Premier League's elite and several Serie A sides were also linked with his services. However, while De Zerbi made an unsurprisingly rapid return to management, his decision to do so in Marseille raised eyebrows.

In a way, De Zerbi and Marseille were a good match - at least on an emotional level. The combustible coach and the most chaotic club in France had a shared passion for the game that bordered on the obsessive - which helps explain why De Zerbi felt so at home in the city.

He really did 'get' Marseille and understood what OM meant to the supporters. As former Marseille midfielder Samir Nasri told Canal+ Foot, "De Zerbi was like a fan coaching the team. He was extremely affected by defeats."

There's certainly no disputing that claim. After Marseille's painful penalty shootout loss to Paris Saint-Germain in the Trophee des Champions on January 8, he broke down in tears in the dressing room.

"I've never cried after a defeat, but today I did because this defeat hurts," he confessed. "We wanted to leave our mark on this club's history and win a trophy, but we didn't manage it. We had prepared especially well against the best team in Europe that had won everything in 2025, and this time we deserved to win. But we must demand of ourselves to always play like this with character, technique, and defence."

However, Marseille's lack of consistency drove De Zerbi demented and ultimately cost him his job.

Just as he had at Brighton, De Zerbi enjoyed a successful first year at Marseille, securing qualification for the Champions League by finishing second in Ligue 1. But as De Zerbi's unusual but inspired idea for a late-season training camp in Rome underlined, it had been by no means smooth sailing. 

On the contrary, there had already been signs of the stress and strain that would eventually cause his reign to unravel. Just three months into the 2024-25 campaign, in fact, De Zerbi threatened to resign after a 3-1 loss at home to Auxerre on November 8.

"If I'm the problem, I'm ready to leave. I'll leave the money and hand back my contract," De Zerbi told reporters. "I came to Marseille for the Velodrome and yet I can't get the players to give here what I see in training and in away games. It's my fault, it's my responsibility."

There were also several clashes between De Zerbi and players he believed were either slacking or not fully appreciative of what a "privilege" it was to represent Marseille. During one particularly ugly exchange with Ismael Kone, De Zerbi ordered the Canadian off the training field for an alleged lack of effort before then angrily instructing him to call his agent. 

Unsurprisingly, Kone reacted furiously to effectively being told to get out of the club in front of all his team-mates, although since leaving Marseille, first on loan to Rennes, and then on a permanent transfer to Sassuolo, the Canadian is now more annoyed by the fact that the club used the incident to tease the release of a documentary on the 2024-25 season.

But by doing so, Marseille only strengthened the suspicion that the club rather revels in the perception that it takes a special kind of character to survive - let alone thrive - in such a demanding environment. In the end, though, it even became too much for De Zerbi himself. 

Just two months ago, De Zerbi insisted that he was "in it for the long haul" at Marseille. "I'd like to stay beyond three seasons and become one of the longest-serving coaches in the club's history," he was quoted as saying by the Gazzetta dello Sport. "I feel good even amidst the criticism and confusion."

However, after a season that began with what a violent dressing-room dust-up between Adrien Rabiot and Jonathan Rowe that a shocked De Zerbi compared to a "bar-room brawl", he was very clearly approaching the end of his tether by the time Marseille were dumped out of the Champions League on January 28. The manner of their elimination was somewhat unlucky, in that it took a last-second header from Benfica goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin to bump them out of the play-off places, but Marseille didn't remotely deserve to progress after slumping to a dismal 3-0 defeat at Club Brugge in their final league-phase fixture.

De Zerbi was both stunned and disgusted by the pathetic capitulation at the Jan Breydel Stadium, but despite reports that he had tendered his resignation during showdown talks with club president Pablo Longoria and sporting director Medhi Benatia, he decided to try to salvage OM's season. It proved an exercise in futility, though.

Three days after the debacle in Bruges, Marseille threw away a two-goal lead in the final eight minutes of their draw with Paris FC. Spirits were lifted by a Coupe de France win over Rennes, but then came the decisive defeat in Le Classique, which De Zerbi admitted had once again left him in a state of "total despair".

“We prepared for the match as much as possible but, clearly, we didn't prepare well," he admitted. "We need to understand why. Why do we go to Brugge and play like that? Why do we come here and play like that? I'm not inside the players' heads, I don't know what's going on."

De Zerbi had essentially failed to figure out the cause of his side's schizophrenia. One week, they looked like potential world-beaters; the next, completely clueless.

"I'd like to understand why, here in Marseille, we systematically experience these rollercoaster rides, these ups and downs," De Zerbi said after a particularly frustrating loss at home to Nantes on January 4. "This is my 12th season as a coach, but today you have to be more of a psychologist than a coach." The latter is most definitely a role to which De Zerbi is unsuited. 

He may be meticulous in his approach to games, but he's rarely - if ever - calm, cool and collected, particularly when dealing with players. Indeed, it's quite telling that while comparing De Zerbi to Klopp, former Liverpool winger Adam Lallana revealed that he often had to tell his team-mates at Brighton not to take the things that were being said to them on the training pitch to heart. "Don't worry," he'd say, "it's coming from a good place."

De Zerbi's will to win certainly can't be questioned and his intensity is part of what makes his teams so watchable, but the overriding impression is of someone who hasn't yet got the balance right between passion and composure. In that context, he's a bit like Antonio Conte - but without the league titles. And that lack of success is why many people are growing increasingly critical of De Zerbi and his methods.

"Self-esteem is a quality, but here we are dealing with a huge ego," former Marseille and France forward Christophe Dugarry told RMC Sport. "He coached Sassuolo and Brighton, but he speaks as if he's won two Champions Leagues."

After having such high hopes for De Zerbi when he arrived at the Velodrome, Dugarry now believes that the 46-year-old has turned out to be "overrated", a "mediocre coach" and poor man-manager who struggles to impact games with his substitutions.

Of course, such a scathing review is unlikely to prevent De Zerbi from getting another job soon. He actually left the Velodrome with the best win percentage (57) of any Marseille manager since the turn of the century, while Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was among several players to pay tribute to the Italian. "From experience, I know that you don't find a coach like you every day," the veteran striker wrote on social media. 

De Zerbi is certainly a rare breed, a unique character with an ability to get teams playing aesthetically pleasing football - and fast. For that reason, he still has plenty of admirers in Italy and England, and is likely on Tottenham's shortlist to succeed Thomas Frank as manager.

However, if his time in Marseille has taught us anything, it's that wherever he goes next, it likely won't be for long.