Enzo Maresca Thread

[Fernando 6,741]

That is the truth. 

I don't care what they say about this summer, it was the same said years ago, and last summer. 

These guys need to go! 

[Vesper 31,143]

My understanding is Pep Guardiola will step down at the end of the season with Enzo Maresca all but agreed to take charge next season. Let me explain. Everyone at their club knows this is the direction of travel and they have gone as far as to talk about naming a stand in his honour. The reason it has not been reported as of yet is because every single credible journalist fears Pep and his erratic nature of making a U-Turn “out of the blue” and you cant attach your lifes work and reputation to such a erratic yet genius human being without being 100000% sure and I respect that. In summary, City have prepared for life without him with everything in place hoping he says “ we cannoh replace me” The direction of travel is for him to step down and they have agreed an in-depth package with Maresca. They will deny it and I respect that but… Let the chips fall where they may.

 

[mkh 783]

✅️Enzo Maresca to City✅️

 

[Pizy 19,327]

Ngl, this definitely makes me lose a bit of respect for Maresca. It absolutely looks like he snaked his way out of here because he had been told Pep was going months ago and City wanted him to be the replacement. 

He’s got the plausible deniability to blame it on clashing with our board, and there likely WAS some of that, but no manager in his position just up and walks away from a top PL job with zero compensation if he didn’t already have something he considers better lined up.
 

Maresca knew LONG before he left Chelsea that he was the next City manager and was working on it WHILST he was managing us. That’s fucked up, tbh…

[Special Juan 28,830]

Maresca wasn't all that, he will inherit Pep's City in the first season and the second season when it all goes Klopp/Slot is where he will be judged

 

[mkh 783]

⏳️👌BREAKING: Chelsea are shaping up for a legal battle with Manchester City over their putative appointment of Enzo Maresca. (@Telegraph)

[Vesper 31,143]

Chelsea could demand compensation if Enzo Maresca replaces Pep Guardiola

Club may launch legal claim if Italian, who left Stamford Bridge in acrimonious circumstances in January, takes over at Manchester City

https://www.thetimes.com/sport/football/article/Chelsea-demand-compensation-enzo-maresca-pep-guardiola-z0rkgw02x

Manchester City could be the subject of a legal claim from Chelsea if, as expected, they appoint Enzo Maresca as a replacement for Pep Guardiola. 

While City remain publicly silent on Guardiola’s future, with the manager unlikely to respond to the latest media reports in the press conferences he is scheduled to give this week, Sunday will be his last game after a decade in charge. It is anticipated a formal announcement of his departure will come before a parade to celebrate the success City have enjoyed this season on Monday.

Chelsea will be watching the situation closely, and could well demand compensation if City respond to Guardiola’s exit by securing the services of a manager who left Stamford Bridge in acrimonious circumstances in January. 

Earlier this season the 46-year-old Italian held a meeting with City via intermediaries and initially used it in an attempt to activate new contract discussions with Chelsea when he was still their head coach. Chelsea and City have always declined to comment publicly on what happened, but at a conference in Los Angeles last month, Chelsea co-owner Behdad Eghbali was asked about Maresca’s departure.

Eghbali, left, pictured with the chairman Todd Boehly, said the departure of Maresca at Chelsea was “not a change we wanted to make” Clive Rose/Getty Images

“The change wasn’t the club’s decision,” he said. “For reasons I can’t speak about legally. I think the reasons will become kind of clear in due course. But no, it’s not a change we wanted to make. It’s a change that’s had a bit of a negative impact on the season, when you’re changing systems and personnel. And it’s one we’ve got to fight our way out of.”

If City choose to dismiss any such claim, Chelsea would have to submit a formal complaint to the Premier League, triggering an investigation.

Maresca left Chelsea on January 2 after he failed to honour his post-match media duties in the wake of a disappointing draw with Bournemouth.

By then his team were on a run of just one win in seven Premier League games, with his position considered to be untenable after aiming what was seen as a direct attack on the club ownership following a defeat of Everton on December 13. Maresca complained that he had experienced “the worst 48 hours” of his career, hinting at clashes with the Stamford Bridge hierarchy.

Maresca, right, worked under Guardiola as his assistant at City Jason Cairnduff/reuters

Chelsea then turned to Liam Rosenior, and now reflect on that managerial change as an episode that seriously undermined their season. The club had been in second place before a run of poor results that preceded Maresca’s departure.

Clearly, Maresca is still held in high regard by City. Before enjoying a successful spell at Leicester City, Maresca was City’s Under-23 coach and then first-team assistant to Guardiola during the 2022-23 season.

After guiding Leicester to the Championship he led Chelsea to Conference League glory and victory at the new-look Club World Cup.

Read more

• Pep Guardiola’s decade at Man City: genius who changed English football
• Pep Guardiola: The stats behind his decade at Man City

City have announced that the parade on Monday will be followed by “The After Party”; what they describe as a “special separate event” at the Co-op Live, the new entertainment venue that sits adjacent to the Etihad Stadium.

“With live music, entertainment, player interviews from both men’s and women’s teams and special guests it’s sure to be an evening to remember,” the club said in a release, with tickets available from £12 for adults. 

[OneMoSalah 9,113]

Don’t see why the club or anyone are that arsed if he goes to City. He didn’t have much of a connection with the fans. They had clauses in his contract for him to inform them if he was going to speak to other clubs. So they obviously were prepared to let him go at some point - its just they’ve got egg on their face and terms weren’t in the clubs favour. 

If they were that bothered they wouldn’t have been so stubborn, they’d of tried to meet him in the middle. But they didn’t. Same with Poch. Same with Tuchel. 

Pointless exercise that will be a distraction or rumble on to the point nobody will give a fuck anyway. Particularly when they are looking to start afresh/with a new approach….

Be same again situation again in 12 months no doubt when they fall out with Alonso.

Edited Tuesday at 20:38 by OneMoSalah

[Vesper 31,143]

Enzo Maresca working on transfer, pre-season plans ahead of Manchester City job

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7289785/2026/05/20/man-city-enzo-maresca-manager-plans/

Enzo Maresca has started working on summer transfer activity and pre-season planning before his impending appointment by Manchester City.

The Italian is set to replace Pep Guardiola at the Etihad Stadium, with the Catalan bringing to an end his glittering 10-year tenure.

Former Chelsea head coach Maresca left Stamford Bridge in January, a fortnight after The Athletic revealed he would be high among the candidates for the City job in the event Guardiola departed the club this summer, as he is now set to do.

And sources briefed on the situation, not authorised to speak publicly, say he has already been collaborating closely with sporting director Hugo Viana for pre-season, the new campaign and beyond in preparation to take over.

Maresca won the Conference League and the Club World Cup in his one full season in charge in west London and led the club to Champions League qualification.

The 46-year-old, who won the Championship title with Leicester City, has worked at City previously, coaching the club’s Under-21 side for the 2020-21 season and returning as a first-team assistant to Guardiola in the summer of 2022.

Guardiola has guided City to 20 trophies across a decade at the club, including the Carabao Cup and FA Cup this season.

After winning four successive Premier League titles between 2021 and 2024, with the 2022-23 campaign bringing the treble including City’s first Champions League trophy, the club have now gone successive seasons without a league title.

In 2024-25, City finished third and 13 points behind eventual champions Liverpool, before losing out to Arsenal this campaign.

His final game will come against Aston Villa at the Etihad on Sunday, on the Premier League’s final weekend of the season.

What You Should Read Next

Is Enzo Maresca the right head coach for Manchester City? We asked seven Athletic writers

Succeeding Pep Guardiola at Manchester City will be an onerous — perhaps impossible — task. But Maresca seems certain to accept it

---

What kind of player suits Maresca’s preferred style?

Analysis by Chelsea correspondent Liam Twomey

Asked in a Chelsea press conference about Renato Veiga’s desire to play centre-back in January 2025, Maresca took the opportunity to set out his broader philosophy of the footballers he likes: “If there is a player that only wants to play one position, they have to adapt.”

Maresca values versatility in players, a level of game intelligence and skill that can transcend specialised positions when the opponent or the circumstances of the game demand it.

His goalkeeper must be prepared to play with the ball at his feet well outside his box. His full-backs must be ready to invert into defensive or even attacking midfield, as well as overlap or underlap in the final third. His centre-backs must be prepared to push deep into opposition territory to track their markers, as well as recover into the vast expanse of space behind them.

His midfielders must always know where the space and the free men are. His wingers must pick the right times to move infield and stay wide. His striker must know when to drop deep to receive the ball and link play, and when to run in behind or connect with crosses into the box.

Enzo Fernandez, Marc Cucurella and Pedro Neto in particular thrived. Levi Colwill and Moises Caicedo also excelled in a tighter structure, though Cole Palmer at times gave the impression of a player whose improvisational genius was being curbed.

Maresca will find plenty of suitable players at City. The likes of Nico O’Reilly, Josko Gvardiol, Marc Guehi, Matheus Nunes, Rodri, Jeremy Doku and Antoine Semenyo should adapt easily. Others — perhaps even star names like Gianluigi Donnarumma and Erling Haaland — may find his football less than ideal for their skill sets.

David Ornstein joined The Athletic in October 2019 after 12 years as a sports journalist and correspondent at the BBC. In the role of Football Correspondent, he is responsible for producing exclusive and original stories and interviews, offering unique insight and analysis. He works across

[bigbluewillie 1,983]

Brilliant he fucked the fuckers...

[Reddish-Blue 2,695]

On 19/05/2026 at 07:02, Special Juan said:

Maresca wasn't all that, he will inherit Pep's City in the first season and the second season when it all goes Klopp/Slot is where he will be judged

 

It'll be interesting to see if some of the City boys want a new challenge post-Pep though

Maresca isn't a household name like Pep and he's never had to manage a team with title challenge expectations in the PL.   For Chelsea, it was qualify for UCL. 

Imagine being Arsenal right now, you just got given the league title (with some biased calls) and now your biggest threat is leaving the PL altogether 😆

[NikkiCFC 8,524]

2 hours ago, Reddish-Blue said:

It'll be interesting to see if some of the City boys want a new challenge post-Pep though

Maresca isn't a household name like Pep and he's never had to manage a team with title challenge expectations in the PL.   For Chelsea, it was qualify for UCL. 

Imagine being Arsenal right now, you just got given the league title (with some biased calls) and now your biggest threat is leaving the PL altogether 😆

Well, good news is that there are no more dominant sides like we used to have for many seasons where champions were between 90-100 points. Liverpool failed to win title with 97 and 92 points, Arsenal with 89. This season just 82 was needed for title which is the smallest amount of points since Leicester. 

[Vesper 31,143]

Is Enzo Maresca the right head coach for Manchester City? We asked seven Athletic writers

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7291873/2026/05/20/enzo-maresca-manchester-city/

It must rank as one of the hardest jobs in football.

Succeeding Pep Guardiola, arguably the greatest coach of his era, at Manchester City will be an onerous — perhaps impossible — task, but Enzo Maresca seems certain to accept it.

We asked seven writers at The Athletic to debate whether it would be the right move for City and Maresca.

---

Oliver Kay

Enzo Maresca would be, without question, a gamble on Manchester City’s part. An educated gamble — given the identity and track record of those making the decision — but a gamble nonetheless.

It was also a gamble when Chelsea appointed him in the summer of 2024 when he had been a head coach for just 18 months, with Parma in Italy’s second tier and Leicester City in England’s second tier. Did it pay off? To an extent, yes — he was certainly more successful than the club’s other coaching appointments under BlueCo’s ownership — but he only won 28 Premier League matches out of 57 (and only eight of 19 in season two). Even taking Chelsea’s dysfunction into account, it was a steady record rather than a spectacular one.

If I were a City supporter, or indeed a City player, I would be concerned that any coach would be a downgrade on Pep Guardiola. Maresca might have some of the same ideas and coaching principles, but does he have the same energy, the same charisma, the same knowledge? Watching him at Chelsea, I never thought so. He struck me as a very good coach who was still finding his way. The guy he will be taking over from is a once-in-a-generation type.

What You Should Read Next

Inside Enzo Maresca’s Chelsea exit: Rotation disagreements, Man City talks and defender woe

Enzo Maresca left Chelsea on New Year's Day but the seeds of his exit were sown many months before

---

Adam Crafton

It’s a tricky one to predict, given how unique the jobs are that Enzo Maresca previously took.

At both Leicester and Chelsea, he achieved trophy-winning success, but he also endured periods in each role which called into question his tactics (particularly keeping possession for possession’s sake at times), as well as his ability to manage both up to the boardroom and the dressing room.

However, it is notable to me that Leicester’s players appeared to sincerely miss him when he left upon promotion and a handful of Chelsea’s players also appear to have been grieving his exit in the second half of this season. I did see his best Chelsea performance, the demolition of PSG in the Club World Cup final, but performances such as these were a one-off rather than consistent.

Enzo Maresca’s Chelsea demolished PSG in the Club World Cup finalAlex Grimm/Getty Images

While I understand the sense of continuity (Maresca’s preferred playing style is similar to Guardiola’s and he has been in the City system), I also wonder how City’s players may respond to a coach who could easily be perceived as Pep-Lite. It’s also worth remembering that Guardiola’s own style has become more direct over the past 18 months, and Maresca may need to undergo his own evolution to maximise the talent pool now on City’s books.

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Dan Sheldon

The new sporting understatement of the year is that replacing Pep Guardiola is going to be an incredibly tall order, maybe even impossible.

He is undeniably the best manager of his generation and will leave a void that is going to be incredibly difficult for Manchester City to fill, no matter their faith in Enzo Maresca.

There is every chance I may look daft come May 2027, but it is difficult to get excited about the anticipated appointment.

Yes, Guardiola is leaving a squad packed full of talent that has age on its side, yet I have a nagging feeling that Maresca is not the right coach to take City forward.

Even though Leicester City topped the Championship under Maresca in 2023-24, they limped over the line and you wouldn’t have found many supporters distraught over his exit a few weeks later.

A Club World Cup success and messy exit later, the jury — in my view — remains out on just how good Maresca is. There is no doubt that City have done their due diligence and given this a lot of thought — plus, are any elite managers actually available? — but I am not optimistic that it is going to work.

Cue me looking rather silly at the end of next season.

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Rob Tanner

There is a sense of fate dictating that Enzo Maresca succeed Pep Guardiola at Manchester City.

Maresca worked as the under-21s coach at City under Guardiola and the two bonded over a shared vision of how the game should be played. Maresca then moved to Leicester City to realise his vision on a team that had just been relegated to the Championship.

There were doubts whether it would work and whether the possession-based style would suit the players he had inherited. He was questioned at times by the fans, despite consistently getting results, but he was steadfast in his commitment and unwavering in his belief in his plan.

The players loved it. They enjoyed the structure he gave them, the fact everything was based around possession rather than running. Above all, they enjoyed winning again.

When he left for Chelsea after winning the Championship, Leicester’s decline gathered pace.

Maresca celebrates winning the Championship with LeicesterNathan Stirk/Getty Images

It is never easy to follow in the footsteps of a club’s greatest manager, but Maresca will not be daunted by the prospect. His self belief is iron-clad. He doesn’t like to be dictated to by senior management on football matters and he is not a corporate yes man, but City will know the character they are bringing in.

He can be sensitive to media criticism at times so will have to toughen his skin, but the appointment of Maresca does make sense as it should be a less daunting transition from Guardiola than would otherwise be the case with another manager.

---

Greg O’Keeffe

It will be interesting to see whether Enzo Maresca has reflected on why it did not work out for him at Chelsea.

Because as much as there was sympathy for him over the circumstances he had to operate under — with suggestions of pressure over his selections, constant scrutiny from exec level and clashes with the medical department — there’s also a feeling he didn’t help himself.

Did he really need his ego buffered by public backing from the owners? Why did he talk to City about replacing Guardiola while already in a job? Could he have handled the media better?

The answer to all these questions, and the extent to which he has learned and grown, will influence his ability to thrive in an even more challenging role: filling the biggest shoes in club football.

It will be hard to know whether the Italian is the right man to replace the irreplaceable until at least May 2027, but Maresca clearly ticks many boxes for those charged with planning for City’s next epoch, and his ability to unite a group of players and win trophies is proven (to an extent).

There may well be bigger names to which City could turn but Maresca’s time at the Etihad, his ‘feel’ for the club from that previous spell as a first-team coach and perhaps Guardiola’s blessing, is a significant step towards hopes of a smooth transition.

---

Cerys Jones

Sometimes the best solution is the most obvious one. The most important criteria for succeeding Manchester City’s most successful manager is being able to emulate him as closely as possible. Maresca, who is a student of Guardiola’s style of play and worked under him at the Etihad during their treble-winning season, clearly fits that bill. City’s hierarchy know exactly who they are getting.

The fact that they are physically similar and share a tactical profile does not make it a like-for-like swap. Guardiola earned his stature through his playing career, and the fact he successfully implemented his methods at Barcelona and Bayern Munich before City.

Maresca’s promotion with Leicester and the Club World Cup and Conference League wins with Chelsea will not command quite the same respect. However, it has become clear that his relative lack of experience did not stop him winning over Chelsea’s dressing room. City’s, which is generally more stable in any case, ought to be an easier task — and a character reference from their former boss ought to help bring the players on board.

A fundamental difference from his Chelsea days will be that Maresca will not be able to defend any missteps by pointing to what he deems faulty recommendations from others at the club, or the machinery around him not being up to scratch. If he cannot guide a group of players that is a well-oiled winning machine, primed to his football ideas, to trophies, it is hard for the blame to fall anywhere but on him.

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Seb Stafford-Bloor

I don’t envy him. To succeed Pep Guardiola is to be compared with him in every way and it’s difficult to see how Enzo Maresca will ever be flattered by that.

There are many conclusions to draw from Guardiola’s decade at City, but among them is that he normalised success and made it routine and long ago set that as the club’s standard. Arguably, that makes the City job — on a performance evaluation basis at least — harder than any other in Europe today.

Judging Maresca’s coaching credentials is also difficult, because Chelsea was a curious context within which it was never clear who was responsible for what. In fact, one of the arguments that led to his downfall seemed to be regarding how credit was apportioned for the Club World Cup success last summer. On the one hand, Maresca wrangled talent effectively under difficult circumstances. On the other, he was politically clumsy towards the end and allowed his own capital to dissipate remarkably quickly.

Can anyone confidently predict what will happen next?

Oliver Kay|Football Writer

Adam Crafton|Football Writer

Dan Sheldon|Football Writer

Sebastian Stafford-Bloor

Rob Tanner|Leicester City Correspondent

Greg O'Keeffe|Senior Writer

Cerys Jones|Football Writer

[Vesper 31,143]

Inside Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City exit and their move for Enzo Maresca

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7295673/2026/05/23/inside-pep-guardiolas-manchester-city-exit-and-their-move-for-enzo-maresca/

Manchester City’s Premier League title challenge ended at Bournemouth on Tuesday and the expectation was Pep Guardiola would soon confirm the inevitable, that he will be leaving at the end of the season. Then the days ticked by.

Media reports on Monday night had shattered the public illusion that Guardiola was going nowhere — for months he had uttered the words, “I have a contract”, his version of saying he was staying, and on several occasions he talked about plans for next season — but as the days went on, City fans hoped that he would be staying after all, that the stories were false.

By Thursday night, Guardiola still had not told his players and staff members of his plans, but everything changed on Friday morning. Official confirmation that his decade in Manchester is coming to an end arrived at the slightly unusual time of 11:10. It took the form of a three-minute video, which he narrated. Talking about subjects from City’s style of play to the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, he closed with a correction to Tony Walsh’s famous poem, “This is the Place”. “I’m sorry Tony,” he said. “This is my place.” He wrote the script himself.

Guardiola had shown the video to the players before it was released to the public. He then had lunch with all members of first-team staff. He talked about what Manchester meant to him and there were tears, both from the manager and others.

Behind the scenes, he had long planned to leave the club this summer. City had conducted a detailed search for a successor last year and, as revealed by The Athletic this week, the chosen replacement, Enzo Maresca, has already started working with director of football Hugo Viana on plans for the summer and beyond.

Guardiola is considered hard to read even by those who know him, and at times it has felt obvious from his public comments that he is leaving, yet at other times he has appeared to speak sincerely about preparing the team for the 2026-27 campaign. In reality, he had planned months ago that this would be his final season at City. “It’s time,” he said in a press conference on Friday. “It’s not wake up and say, ‘Now is the time to leave’ — it is a process that I felt for a while.”

In the summer of 2024, he had decided to leave in 2025, alongside director of football Txiki Begiristain. It was a shock, therefore, when he signed a new contract in November 2024, not least because he had not even told his staff he was going to sign it.

It was an even bigger shock that he signed a two-year deal, but Guardiola had a strong idea even then that he would in fact only do one, taking him to this summer. In the past couple of months, he decided to stick with that idea.

It was always possible Guardiola would change his mind again and City were hopeful the manager would confirm his plans. Sources familiar with the matter — like others referenced in this article speaking anonymously to protect relationships — suggest the pursuit of Maresca accelerated around then.

Speaking about the planning involved in replacing him, Guardiola said on Friday: “Always the club respected me unbelievably, with the decision, of course the club has to be ready.”

Guardiola may have had said he needed to hold a final conversation with his chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, to draw a line underneath his time at the club, but the outcome was already settled, no matter how much fans had hoped for a U-turn, because his exit has been thoroughly planned across various different departments of the club. Discussions were held about naming the redeveloped North Stand ‘The Pep Guardiola Stand’, with official confirmation coming soon after the club announced his departure. A statue has been commissioned, too, something Guardiola found out about on Friday morning via a call from Al Mubarak.

In late 2025, City began to consider the potential candidates who could replace Guardiola, taking in various factors, including their style of play and personality. The club deny drawing up a shortlist. Multiple sources have told The Athletic Xabi Alonso, the Real Madrid manager at the time, was one of the names mentioned.

City already had Maresca at the front of their minds due to his history with the club and things stayed that way. The Italian had been recommended to Begiristain by former City manager Manuel Pellegrini years ago, leading Begiristain to recommend him to the club’s academy as somebody they should interview for the role of under-23s coach.

Pep Guardiola and Enzo Maresca enjoy a good relationshipMichael Regan/Getty Images

Academy staff were blown away by his preparation, including endless folders on his laptop containing tactical research on teams across the world. He was hired, and his job working with City’s most talented youngsters, including Cole Palmer, Liam Delap and James McAtee, meant Begiristain considered him a potential option either to work alongside, or replace, Guardiola one day.

Notable former club figures had long planned to attend Sunday’s final game against Aston Villa, knowing it would be Guardiola’s swansong. The official announcement came with the news that he will take up a role as global ambassador across the City Football Group. The City boss had thought hard about his own goodbye; as well as writing and performing the words for the announcement video, he initially suggested he would like a farewell event during the summer. It was felt, though, that things will have moved on, that the new manager will be in place, and that capitalising on the end-of-season emotion would be best.

The event at Co-Op Live on Monday, billed before confirmation of his departure as a chance to celebrate the men’s domestic cup double and the Women’s Super League title, was always about ensuring Guardiola could enjoy a proper, special send-off after a bus parade around the city.

His recent visit to Stockport County also appeared to be related to a potential exit; he is friends with the club’s owner, Mark Stott, who owns the building Guardiola lives in, and figures at the League One side were under the impression the City boss was fulfilling an old promise to attend a match before he left England. In the days after the game, whispers coming out of Stockport suggested Guardiola was going at the end of the season.

Last week, there were rumours Guardiola had had a change of heart, and that he wanted to stay after all. He had apparently asked Bernardo Silva to stay with him for one more year, though the midfielder says he was being asked that question throughout the campaign.

Those who spent time with Guardiola last week insisted they had not noticed any change in his demeanour and still expected him to go. After the FA Cup final against Chelsea on Saturday, at least two people close to him felt the Catalan was speaking in a way that suggested his time at City was coming to an end.

There were more public clues at Wembley, for example the way he waited on the pitch to take pictures with backroom staff and others in his setup, some of whom looked shocked to be asked.

But there were no exaggerated waves in front of the fans, the kind that everybody understands as a goodbye. At Bournemouth on Tuesday, there were even fewer signs, as he simply walked over to the away end, clapped briefly, and headed back towards the tunnel.

He sat and faced the press afterwards and talked, again, about preparing the team for next season. Pushed on his future, he said he would speak to his chairman to see, among other things, if he would stay or not. It gave fans hope that the matter was not settled, and that is the impression Guardiola had wanted to give all along.

“Always, I said that fighting for the titles or qualifications or Premier Leagues or FA Cups, the reason you don’t go, in that first moment there is a problem, the players don’t follow you anymore,” he said, explaining that he had not wanted to announce anything and impact City’s push for trophies.

Pep Guardiola had been sticking to the mantra that he had another year left on his contractAlex Pantling/Getty Images

He has not wanted to let it slip but he has been speaking like a man who is leaving for months. It was not long into the New Year, shortly after Maresca had left Chelsea, in fact, when he broke the habit of a lifetime and started turning on referees in public. He has been shouting in their faces for years, but has never wanted to look like he is making excuses by blaming them in press conferences.

That changed with an outburst at Newcastle United following a win in the Carabao Cup, and since then he has made plenty of jibes. He has also started bringing up long-forgotten controversies, and indeed incidents that never seemed controversial in the first place, like an N’Golo Kante challenge on Ilkay Gundogan from 2016, that nobody other than him noticed at the time.

He has spoken nostalgically, as if looking back on his time, about turning up to FA Cup away games against lower-league teams and missing stadiums like Goodison Park and Craven Cottage.

When it comes to succession planning, City have always favoured candidates they are familiar with. Had Guardiola left City years ago, Patrick Vieira, another former U23 boss, and Mikel Arteta, Guardiola’s former assistant, would have been in the frame.

Some figures at City were also admirers of Ange Postecoglou due to his work with City Football Group-affiliated club Yokohama F Marinos in Japan.

Interest in Maresca should come as no surprise.

While many of the influential figures he had worked with previously have left the club, such as Begiristain and, to a lesser extent, academy director Jason Wilcox, recommendations had been passed on to Viana. Guardiola himself was obviously a big factor, considering their time working together during the 2022-23 season, when City won the Treble.

City reached out to Maresca at the end of last year, and due to the terms of the Italian’s contract at Chelsea, he informed his employers about the talk. Things appeared to go downhill quickly and soon afterwards they parted ways.

Chelsea were, and still are, furious about how things played out. Sources at the club say it was Maresca’s decision to leave, even though his contract still had a minimum of three and a half years left to run. Sources close to Maresca suggest he told the club he was happy to stay and agree a new deal when informing them of Manchester City’s approach. No such discussions took place. From Chelsea’s point of view, they felt it was premature to discuss fresh terms so soon after signing a long-term agreement the year before when hiring the Italian from Leicester City.

The London club had wanted to avoid making a managerial change halfway through a season, as they had done with Thomas Tuchel in 2022 and Graham Potter a year later. The plan was always to review everything about Chelsea, including Maresca, at the end of his second year in charge. Chelsea turned to Liam Rosenior, who was in charge of Strasbourg, in early January as Maresca’s replacement but his reign lasted just 107 days. The disruption caused by Maresca’s departure is regarded internally as a key factor in why results deteriorated and they failed to qualify for the Champions League via a top-five finish in the Premier League.

Multiple sources say issues between the club and Maresca grew after he guided Chelsea to the Club World Cup. For example, Maresca made his desire for the club to sign a centre-back public last August after Levi Colwill was ruled out for several months with a serious knee injury. It caused tension on both sides and that lingered for several weeks after the season started. One Chelsea insider spoke about how they noticed a change in Maresca’s personality after winning the FIFA tournament that summer. People close to Maresca insist he remained the same and was just happy to see the work put in achieve success.

Since leaving Chelsea and in preparation for moving to City, Maresca appears to have been on a mission to absorb as much information from as many different fields as possible. The search of inspiration is Guardiola-like. He read the book Football and Chess, by Adam Wells, while on holiday in the Maldives and has spoken to Italian sporting legend Julio Velasco, the man who made the Italy men’s volleyball team world champions in the 1990s and the women’s team Olympic gold medallists in 2024.

Enzo Maresca has been out of work since leaving ChelseaMattia Guolo/SPORTWEEK/Fashion Director/Styling: Gianluca Zappoli

He has also spent time with Ettore Messina, Italy’s most successful basketball coach, who has worked at the San Antonio Spurs, and Nicolo Govoni, an activist behind humanitarian project Still I Rise, aimed at getting impoverished kids into school.

At a recent awards dinner in Italy, he was asked about his time working with Guardiola: “First of all, he taught me the methodology, how to put it into practice because you can imagine he does things, but you then have to understand how he does them; working with him, I was lucky enough to see how to approach certain tasks.

“One thing that doesn’t often get remarked upon is his work ethic: when you hear people say he arrives at seven in the morning and leaves at seven at night, and is the last to turn out the lights at the office — that’s Pep through and through. So his work ethic is one of the most wonderful things and it demonstrates the passion he has for his job.”

Over the past few months, it had become common, and also understandable, for City fans to grow frustrated with media reports about Guardiola’s future, with the manager insisting he had one year left on his contract, and only ever hinting through body language and nostalgic comments that he was planning to leave.

But this has been a change a long time in the making.

Sam Lee is the Manchester City correspondent for The Athletic. The 2024-25 campaign will be his 10th following the club, having previously held other positions with Goal and the BBC, and freelancing in South America.