Enzo Maresca Praises Open-Minded Manchester City Squad as Post-Guardiola Identity Emerges

Enzo Maresca said from the moment he arrived at Manchester City that he had no intention of running Pep Guardiola’s old playbook, and after a 3-1 win over Atletico Madrid in Seoul rounded off a productive pre-season tour of Asia, the shape of his own ideas is becoming clear. Antoine Semenyo set up two goals, Omar Marmoush scored twice, and Maresca left South Korea praising a squad he says has embraced change without hesitation.

“I’m very happy because the players since I joined the club, they are open-minded, they want to know, they want to do new things,” Maresca said. “We are trying to install new things on the ball and off the ball. So especially these 15 days have been very important to create connections with the players.”

Replacing a Decade of Guardiola

Maresca’s task was never going to be simple. Guardiola left the Etihad Stadium after ten years in charge and 17 major trophies, a run that reshaped what the club expected from a season. City ended last term without the Premier League title for the first time in years, finishing seven points behind a resurgent Arsenal side that ended a 22-year wait for the championship, though City did collect both domestic cups along the way.

Maresca arrived from Chelsea, where he departed by mutual consent on New Year’s Day, and signed a three-year contract at City with the club paying his former employers more than £17m in compensation. He is not a stranger to the building. Maresca spent time as an assistant coach under Guardiola in City’s 2018-19 treble-winning season, giving him an insider’s understanding of the culture he is now being asked to update rather than dismantle.

Wingers First, Full-Backs Deeper

The clearest sign of Maresca’s approach is where he wants the ball to go. Getting possession to his wide players and creating room for them to attack has become the priority, with Semenyo and Savinho combining for ten take-ons between them against Atletico Madrid. Where Guardiola’s full-backs typically pushed high and narrow, Maresca has set his up deeper, opening space in front of them for the front three to exploit. Semenyo made the most of it, driving twice down the left before squaring for Marmoush to finish both chances from close range.

Behind that front line, Mateo Kovacic has been used as the holding presence, with Tijjani Reijnders breaking forward from deeper positions and Phil Foden operating in pockets of space around the edge of the box rather than in a fixed central role. It is a structure built around specific jobs for specific players, and Maresca has made clear he expects the identity to sharpen further once his squad is complete.

None of this comes as a surprise to those who watched Maresca’s work at Chelsea, where he built a possession-heavy system around patient build-up play and specific roles for inverted full-backs. City’s raw materials are different, and considerably more expensive, but the underlying principles look familiar: control the ball, manipulate the opposition’s defensive shape, and trust individual quality to finish the moves that method creates. What remains to be seen is whether a squad built for Guardiola’s positional demands can adjust just as smoothly to a coach asking different questions of the same players.

Marmoush Repays the Service

Marmoush’s brace took his pre-season tally into good form heading into the new campaign, and he was quick to credit the players supplying him. “As a striker, goals give you confidence and it gets you going in the flow,” he said. “Semenyo, without him, these goals wouldn’t have been possible. I just had to tap it in the net and I’d like to thank him.”

He admitted the timing of his movement needed work in the first half. “The first half, honestly, I had three or four chances where Semenyo and Savinho dribbled and they played the ball and I wasn’t there,” Marmoush said. “So the second half all that was in my head was just to make the runs and be there. They did their job and in the end we won. It was a really, really good feeling.”

Maresca offered the same kind of praise for Semenyo, who joined City this summer and has been asked to adapt quickly to a new system in a new country. “The first thing I said to him when I joined the club was ‘I’m very happy that now you’re with us!'” Maresca said. “Antoine played well but the effort from all the players has been fantastic.”

Foden’s Reset

Few players at the club have more riding on Maresca’s methods working than Foden, who has spent his entire senior career under Guardiola and now has to adjust to an entirely different voice in the dressing room. Speaking earlier in the tour, Foden said he has enjoyed the change. “I found it good to be honest. All I’ve known is Pep Guardiola, so it’s a fresh start,” he said. “I’m enjoying the new coaching staff, the way we’re playing and the things we’re doing in training. I’m just really excited for the season and hopefully we can have a really good year.”

Foden was careful not to give too much away about the specifics of his role under the new head coach. “I don’t want to give too much away of how we play, but maybe the defending is a little bit different as well, how we set up,” he said. “We have different ideas of play out from the back, a different variety of things on the ball, but I think the lads are very comfortable because we want to play football from the back and build the attack and try and create, so I think it suits everyone really well.”

Asked whether he had discussed his specific role with Maresca, Foden said the conversation was still to come. “We’ve not really had those discussions yet,” he said. “I think what he wants from me though is to try and be an example to the young lads at the moment on tour. Try and train really well, keep my head down, work hard. That’s what I’ve been trying to do really.” Foden also spoke about the arrival of Elliot Anderson, a fellow attacking midfielder joining the squad this summer. “I’m really excited to have him at the club. When I’ve watched him previously or played against him, he’s a player that likes to find the number 10 and wrap balls through the lines. I think that suits me really well. I’m excited to play with him.”

The Squad Still to Come Together

Maresca was quick to point out that the version of his team seen in Seoul is not the finished article. Erling Haaland and Anderson are both set to link up with the squad next week, and the head coach expects the patterns of play he is building to hold even as the personnel around them changes. Some of the individual names will change once the squad returns to full strength, but Sky Sports’ analysis of the win in Seoul concluded that the underlying patterns of play Maresca wants were already visible against Atletico Madrid.

With the pre-season tour now finished, Maresca’s attention turns to results that count in the table. “Tomorrow you start the season. The pre-season is finished. The important thing is no injuries,” he said, before City return to the UK to prepare for the Community Shield against Arsenal on August 16, their first real test against a rival with everything still to prove under a new manager.

The Seoul leg of the tour summed up the mixed feelings around City’s summer so far. Maresca’s side lost on penalties to Inter Milan before bouncing back with the win over an All Stars XI and then the victory over Atletico Madrid, results that suggest a squad still finding its feet rather than one operating at full effectiveness. That will not concern Maresca unduly. His entire message throughout the trip has centred on process over results, and on players buying into ideas before those ideas are judged on points.

The Community Shield offers the first real examination of that process against a side with something to prove of its own. Arsenal go into the fixture as champions for the first time in over two decades, with Mikel Arteta’s side having finished seven points clear of a City team that spent the season adjusting to the early signs of change under Guardiola before his exit was confirmed. A meeting between two clubs at very different stages of transition, in front of a Cardiff crowd rather than the usual Wembley setting, will offer an early marker of how far Maresca’s rebuild has come.

For a club that spent a decade being defined by one manager’s methods, the willingness Maresca describes in his players, to learn, to adapt and to be judged on new terms, will count for more than any single pre-season scoreline. Seoul offered an early glimpse of what he is trying to build. The Premier League season will offer the real test.