Marco Silva can help Everton realize their European dream

After an underwhelming 2017-18 season, Everton have turned to Marco Silva to help them realize their European ambitions.

This has been a sobering couple of years for Everton. Last season was supposed to be a coming out party of sorts, the first step on their path to breaking into the big six. Instead, it ended with an eighth-place finish, a deeply disillusioned fanbase and hundreds of millions squandered in the transfer market.

After a disastrous start to the campaign, during which a 32-year-old Wayne Rooney (playing in central midfield) was their best player, new signing Davy Klaassen forgot how to play soccer and Michael “The Next John Terry” Keane struggled for form and confidence, Everton sacked the man who was supposed to lead the revolution, Ronald Koeman, replacing him, after an unhappy spell under caretaker boss David Unsworth, with Sam Allardyce.

There’s nothing shameful about finishing eighth, except when you spend almost £200 million over the summer only to finish 12 points worse off than you did the season before, one place behind Burnley, who boasted the league’s lowest wage bill, and do it all playing some of the worst soccer in the division.

Everton haven’t done a lot this summer to suggest anything significant has changed. £50 million (including a “goodwill” fee) spent on 21-year-old Richarlison, who hasn’t scored or assisted a Premier League goal since last December, a 3-0 preseason loss to Blackburn, Merseyside Rivals going from strength to strength — all of this has only added to the sense the Toffees are becoming one of the Premier League’s most reliable punchlines.

But there is at least one big reason to think this season will be different: Marco Silva.

Everton tried to bring in the Portuguese manager to replace Koeman last season, but while they successfully unsettled the then-Watford manager, and ultimately contributed to his sacking, they couldn’t pry him away from Vicarage Road until after the season had concluded. Ugly as the process was, the club finally have their man.

Silva’s experience as a manager in the Premier League is limited, but the work he did at both Hull, where he almost led a miraculous escape from relegation while transforming players like Lazar Markovic and Oumar Niasse (who he’ll work with at Everton), and Watford (before the Everton saga, anyway) suggests, along with impressive spells in Portugal and Greece, he’s one of the most promising young managers in Europe.

At Goodison Park, he’ll be working with a squad, for all their recent disappointments, featuring plenty of talent. Yannick Bolasie, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Nikola Vlasic, Cenk Tosun and youngsters Tom Davies and Dominic Calvert-Lewin should form a good attack, while the defense, at least on paper, is better than the 58 goals it conceded last season.

Then, of course, there’s Richarlison, who will be expected, fairly or not, to surpass the heights he hit for Watford at the beginning of last season. The Brazilian adapted to the Premier League seamlessly, only for his form to drop of significantly after Silva’s departure. Given the fee Everton paid for him, and the fact he’ll be playing for the manager who convinced him to go to England in the first place, similar inconsistency will be greeted much more harshly this season. But if anyone is going to help him reach his potential, it’s Silva.

The same, at this point, could be said about Everton in general. They seem like the club most capable of making a Tottenham-like jump to the upper echelons of the Premier League, but have wasted that potential with a series of botched managerial appointments and wasteful spending in the transfer market. Silva has the talent to put things right, to give the club the coherent identity they’ve been lacking.

But it’s notable that he’s lasted more than a single season at a single club only once, his first managerial post, at Estoril from 2011-14. He led the Portuguese side to the top flight for the first time in seven years, before guiding them to impressive fifth- and fourth-place finishes. The stage will be grander at Goodison Park, but the challenge is very much the same.