Can Enzo Maresca Succeed at Manchester City After Replacing Pep Guardiola?

Manchester City have begun a new chapter, and the man tasked with running it knows the club better than almost anyone stepping into a Premier League dugout for the first time this season.

Enzo Maresca has returned to the Etihad Stadium for a third stint, this time as head coach, after Pep Guardiola’s decision to leave the club he transformed over ten trophy-laden years. Maresca was an academy coach at City in 2020-21, then Guardiola’s assistant in 2022-23, the campaign in which City won the Premier League, the Champions League and the FA Cup. He knows what winning at this level looks like from close range. He is yet to be the one who delivers it himself on that scale.

Maresca gives his first press conference as City manager on Friday, 24 July, but the questions about how he approaches the job are already taking shape.

His route back to the club says plenty about how highly City rate him. Working under Guardiola through the treble season put him at the centre of a squad and a coaching set-up regarded as one of the finest English football has produced, and City’s decision to bring him back as the man in overall charge, rather than simply promoting from within the existing staff, reflects the trust built in that spell. Managing a club at this level as the head coach, rather than as a trusted lieutenant, is a different job altogether, and it is the one part of the role Maresca has not yet proven he can do at this scale.

A sympathetic start

City’s opening fixtures have been kind to Maresca. His first three games in charge come against Bournemouth, Crystal Palace and Coventry City, a run that should allow him to establish some early rhythm while giving his World Cup contingent, those who went furthest in the tournament, time to ease back into club football.

Rodri played close to every minute of Spain’s triumphant World Cup campaign and is considered the player most likely to break down through fatigue if rushed back too soon. With City’s opening fixtures still favourable without him, a phased return looks the sensible path.

That does not mean Maresca is free of pressure. Those three games are winnable on paper, and he cannot afford to fall behind early, especially with City facing Manchester United and Liverpool in two of their following three fixtures in September. Both of those matches carry stakes well beyond three points.

As Maresca put it when he joined, he has walked into a “dream situation”, inheriting a well-balanced squad with real talent and depth built by Guardiola. “It provides the consistency I need to do my job effectively,” he said.

The demands on him will match those once placed on Guardiola, without the same guarantee of time. Guardiola always managed on his own terms at City. Maresca has a strong relationship with chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak, but he will not necessarily be afforded the same latitude.

How much will City’s style change?

Stylistically, this is not a straight continuation of the Guardiola years, but there are clear overlaps. Both managers build their teams around possession, control and aggressive pressing. Maresca leans toward the more expansive approach of the two, keen to stretch opponents with wingers who stay high and wide.

City’s wingers have more recently been coached to tuck inside and rotate to create central overloads, with most of the build-up play running through Rodri in a fluid system. Under Guardiola, it was common to see defenders step into midfield, midfielders push forward as auxiliary attackers, or full-backs drop into deeper positions altogether.

Maresca’s preferred 4-2-3-1 is a more rigid structure and is likely to bring more traditional positional roles back to the side. It also depends on a No 10 capable of linking midfield and attack. At Chelsea, that role belonged to Cole Palmer. At City, Maresca has Phil Foden or Rayan Cherki to choose between if he wants to set his team up the same way.

A younger, leaner squad

City’s recruitment under football director Hugo Viana has spent the past two or three transfer windows bringing the average age of the squad down, from 29 to just over 25. That process has left a leadership gap following this summer’s departures of Bernardo Silva and John Stones, coming after Kevin De Bruyne’s exit before them.

Rodri and Ruben Dias remain central figures, while last season saw Erling Haaland take on more of a leadership role inside the dressing room. Marc Guehi and Josko Gvardiol offer experience alongside Mateo Kovacic, and the spine of the squad remains strong even with those senior voices gone.

City’s business this summer has been costly but considered. Elliot Anderson arrived from Nottingham Forest in a deal that made him the most expensive British player in history, brought in to add steel and protect the midfield for years to come, while teenager Jeremy Monga has been taken from Leicester City. City are also still looking for a right-back and a winger, and have kept a close eye on Lille’s Ayyoub Bouaddi, who impressed at the World Cup for Morocco, with Arsenal also admirers of the same player.

Outgoings could still shape the squad further. Depending on whether suitors meet City’s valuations, Savinho, Omar Marmoush, Nico Gonzalez, Jack Grealish, Tijjani Reijnders and Rico Lewis are all players who might leave before the window closes. Transfer activity across the market is expected to speed up now the World Cup has finished.

Guardiola leaves having collected 20 major trophies across his decade in charge, the most successful spell any manager has had at an English club. Maresca’s route back to the Etihad was not simple either. City had to negotiate compensation with Chelsea after an acrimonious split from his previous post before he could formally take the reins this month, a process that delayed the start of his pre-season planning compared to a normal managerial change.

Uncertainty at the top for the first time in almost two decades

This is the first time from the Abu Dhabi takeover onward that City’s long-term plan has looked truly uncertain. A decade ago, everything the club built was aimed at eventually persuading Guardiola to come to the Premier League. That project has run its course, so the question now is what comes next.

City have built a culture around winning silverware, and anything less is unlikely to be accepted for long. Supporters at the Etihad expect to be entertained, but above all they expect to win. Balancing both of those demands is exactly where Maresca’s time at Chelsea came unstuck.

There is one advantage working in his favour: Maresca is far from the only manager starting fresh at one of the Premier League’s leading clubs this season. Andoni Iraola has left Bournemouth to take charge of Liverpool as Arne Slot’s successor, Xabi Alonso has been appointed at Chelsea on a four-year deal, and Michael Carrick, to a lesser extent, faces his own questions at Manchester United. With so many of England’s leading clubs entering a period of change together, City see an opportunity to gain ground while their rivals also find their feet. It promises to be an unusually open race at the top of the table, with none of the four new appointments carrying the kind of established authority Guardiola built up over nine years at the Etihad.

Each of those rival changes brings its own version of the question facing Maresca. Iraola arrives at Liverpool after building a reputation for intense, front-footed football at Bournemouth, a very different tactical identity to the one Slot leaves behind. Alonso takes over a Chelsea squad still shaped by the club’s recent recruitment strategy of buying young and often. Carrick, promoted from within Manchester United’s coaching setup, answers to a fanbase that has waited years for genuine progress. None of the three walks into a job with quite the same inherited talent as Maresca does at City, but all four managers will be judged, fairly or not, against the standards their predecessors set.

The shadow of the 115 charges

One issue will not go away regardless of results on the pitch. City’s outstanding 115 Premier League charges continue to hang over the club, and Maresca will be asked difficult questions about them from the media.

Guardiola built a reputation over his career at some of Europe’s biggest clubs for handling that kind of scrutiny, and he knew City’s press pack well enough to close down any line of questioning he preferred not to answer. Maresca faced criticism at Chelsea at times, but it was almost always about results and performances rather than off-field cases. How he manages this particular subject is likely to shape perceptions of his first 12 months in charge, especially if a verdict on the charges arrives within that window. Manchester City deny all of the charges against them.

Friday’s press conference will be the first real chance to hear how Maresca plans to handle all of it, on and off the pitch, as he tries to keep Manchester City winning without the manager who built the machine he has just inherited.

WRITTEN BY

Jarrod

Jarrod Partridge is the Founder of Futbol Chronicle and an accredited journalist with over 30 years of experience following international football. A member of the AIPS International Sports Press Association, Jarrod has covered matches at stadiums around the world, bringing first-hand insight to every match report, player profile, and tactical analysis he writes.

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