How Enzo Maresca proved to Pep Guardiola he deserves Man City job | Football | Sport
Chairman Khaldoon-Al-Mubarak has spent 12 months preparing for ‘LAP’ – ‘Life After Pep’. And choosing to hand the managerial baton to Maresca is a decision which has been a while in the making. But it is something which happened back in 2023, which laid the foundations for Maresca to go on and become the heir to Guardiola’s throne. Maresca was alongside Guardiola during one of the most important speeches of the Spaniard’s managerial career.
He stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Guardiola inside the City dressing room at half-time of that season’s Champions League final. The showpiece game between City and Inter Milan in Istanbul remained goalless and deadlocked.
City had been lacklustre and frustrated. The treble dream hung in the balance. Not to mention Guardiola’s personal ‘Holy Grail’ of conquering Europe.
He had done it before, but not with City. It was the sole reason he’d been appointed in the first place.
Guardiola turned to his players in the dressing room of the Ataturk Olympic Stadium, with a plan he had devised with Maresca during the first half. City went on to win 1-0 and write their names in history. And Guardiola still credits the crucial input of Maresca on that iconic night of Turkish delight.
It is one of the reasons Guardiola has hand-picked Maresca to be his successor. He knows the Italian has lived these big moments. He knows Maresca has the ability to think clearly under pressure. And he knows Maresca is steeped in his and his new club’s methods and approach to winning.
He is one of Guardiola’s graduates. And he has used this knowledge and expertise to go on and win trophies in his own name. He won the Conference League and Club World Cup with Chelsea, when his team took apart Paris Saint-Germain in the final. And when he left Chelsea at the start of 2026, the London club were second in the Premier League table.
Guardiola was said to have been ‘astonished and stunned’ when he discovered Chelsea had sacked him. But he needn’t have been. Because the reason, as we are starting to discover now, was that Chelsea had got wind of talks taking place with Maresca about him replacing Guardiola six months down the line.
And the due diligence City have done on Maresca has led them to the conclusion he will bring a sense of continuity and stability, throughout a seismic period of change in the blue half of Manchester.
He came to idolise Guardiola while facing him as a player in La Liga, and went on to adopt the same formations and tactics when going into management himself. He is obsessed with possession and a methodical approach to attacking football.
He is not afraid to throw in a curveball when he sees fit, and let’s not forget, he is inheriting a squad rammed with world-class talent, which has had £400m lavished on it this season alone.
The tools are all in place for Maresca to go ahead and build something special of his own.
