How Enzo Maresca stepped out of Pep Guardiola’s shadow at Man City: ‘Fire’ in his team talks, heart-to-hearts with Phil Foden, rejecting old boss’ office and a new attacking philosophy

Stalking the room, Enzo Maresca is demanding answers. Demanding to know that his message is seeping in, demanding his players answer in the affirmative.

Maresca commands the space, down on his haunches complaining about Manchester City’s attitude towards second balls and defending. He’s loud, possesses what modern-day managers describe as ‘fire’ and players do not allow their gaze to divert inside that dressing room haze.

The scene, from a team talk earlier this season, reminds you of somebody. Pep Guardiola might be gone but the process of replacing him had to lead City towards a successor who while his own man, carving his own way, does bear a reasonable resemblance. And no, not just physically.

This decision, taken by director of football Hugo Viana with the blessing of Txiki Begiristain – who championed Maresca’s cause more than anyone else – is one that needed to strike a balance of continuity and change. Maresca has moved the dial without new concepts feeling completely alien. That’s the trick – a refresh, not reset.

Guardiola was back in town last week, far earlier than expected after waving a teary goodbye in May. The seismic guilty verdicts accelerated a return, as Guardiola sat in the directors’ box for the defeat by Paris Saint-Germain and had a debrief with Maresca in the inner sanctum afterwards.

Once it was security green-lighting requests for Noel Gallagher to enter the area around the dressing room to see Guardiola and now it was the same staff doing it for Guardiola himself.

Maresca is not in constant contact with his predecessor, as he has reiterated on a number of occasions. They spoke following the emotional one-goal victory at Old Trafford last month but Guardiola is mindful of staying out of the way and thought long and hard before accepting the invite for PSG, fearing his appearance might prove a distraction.

Given the pair are close, Maresca the assistant during the Treble campaign, the situation must be taking some getting used to.

Guardiola is watching City at home religiously and, more pertinently, paying close attention to the fallout of the guilty verdicts handed down for serious breaches of financial rules that could see the club relegated to the Championship, pending an appeal.

He will have noticed the consummate way in which Maresca handled the scrutiny in media briefings, with an authoritative charm and dry humour. A slight detachment certainly helps – something Guardiola could not have utilised were he still in the chair, where the exchanges would likely have been considerably more adversarial.

The way a sanguine Maresca addressed the charges with the players, ‘we have a title to win’ and ‘let’s make our own noise’, was designed to insulate the squad from a hurricane of comment and censure.

In 2023 when the charges dropped, Guardiola used it as fuel. No one likes us and all that. Clearly both styles have their merits and the one three years ago kickstarted a phenomenal run ending in Istanbul.

Maresca was a picture of relaxation as he flicked through his phone while leaning on the Etihad’s breeze blocks down the tunnel on Tuesday night after hammering AEK Athens 5-1. Guardiola looked identical, propped on exactly the same spot hundreds of times before.

Maresca is content at the start, surprised at the consistency of results – City will attempt to go eight from eight in the Premier League at Aston Villa on Saturday – and knows there is room for serious improvement.

‘When you lose important players, many important players, and you lose the manager after 10 years, it always takes time to compete again,’ Maresca said, referencing the exits of Rodri, John Stones, Bernardo Silva, Nathan Ake, Manuel Akanji and more. ‘But we are competing at the moment. This is already a great achievement. We want more.’

There is a degree of pride in that statement from a man who is aware of the need to change certain bits of day-to-day life at the City Football Academy and how they tactically go about winning trophies – for however long that remains a possibility.

So keen is Maresca to subtly alter the messaging that instead of assuming Guardiola’s office he moved to one down the hall. He’s held heart-to-heart conversations with Phil Foden in a bid to recapture his form, with the previous boss having once visited the academy graduate’s house for similar reasons.

Undoubtedly, the 46-year-old wants a more aggressive City. A City more in the image of the 2018 Centurions than the Treble winners. An invitation for the wingers to go at their markers with more regularity, owning their individualism, and the general sense of attempting to force the ball into the box for Erling Haaland with added urgency. 

Players keep saying that the messaging is clear – even if Maresca claimed recently that he’d rather win 1-0 than the basketball 5-3 against Sunderland, which is a position at odds with their swashbuckling performances. ‘I think we can attack better, we can defend better,’ Maresca said. ‘It’s a matter of finding balance.’

While Maresca bristled at suggestions they gave up a few too many chances when beating Ipswich Town, the 4-2 home defeat by PSG a few days earlier gave stronger answers on the balancing act.

He talks about needing the build-up to sharpen up – meaning more control and retaining midfield stability – and removing Rayan Cherki at half-time for teenager Ayyoub Bouaddi when three down offered that.

The midfield trio of Bouaddi, Elliot Anderson and Enzo Fernandez appeared more symmetrical and could represent a blueprint in the tougher games – especially away from home.

The Cherki flicks and tricks were mesmeric in midweek against AEK, with another spectacular goal to boot. ‘Top player,’ Maresca said. ‘One of the best players in Europe when he is in the right position. I also like simple things. I think the most difficult thing in football is to do the easy things, don’t complicate.’

We’ve definitely heard those words before, delivered from the same seat last season. Maresca says he learnt more from PSG than any other game and some of that will be down to the mentality of his leaders from the break onwards. The second-half dominance, when City created scores of opportunities, taught him something tactically but also about the fortitude of certain players.

‘We don’t like to lose games, but the mood in the dressing room afterwards was very positive,’ he said. ‘The players can see with their eyes that if we compete in the way we did in the second half, we are there. It was a nice feeling because yes, we lost the game, but we can be there, we are there.’

Again, that sort of summation sounds familiar. And that is definitely no bad thing for City. Just don’t call him Diet Pep. Somebody tried that once and it didn’t end well. This is Enzo Max.