Time has passed but not much of it. In this game, it tends to move on pretty quickly.
Once his own farewell finished, Pep Guardiola sat on a parade bus watching his players delight Manchester City supporters inside the country’s largest music venue on Monday night.
By Tuesday, with confirmation that almost the entirety of his backroom team are leaving too, City were working on a deal to rubberstamp Enzo Maresca as a successor to the best to have ever done it. And Guardiola was landing in Barcelona with his family, having packed up the apartment last week.
City will not be without a head coach for long. Maresca has been planning ahead in readiness for a fresh start, wherever that may be, since leaving Chelsea on New Year’s Eve and while Guardiola is not handpicking the next man, he’s had a fair say in City’s overwhelming first choice. Anybody coming straight after Guardiola would need his approval and it’d be a bit odd if director of football Hugo Viana didn’t tap into the thoughts of a coaching genius.
There remains an expected compensation package to finalise, although the fact interest from AC Milan, Tottenham, Juventus and Real Madrid (in the aftermath of Xabi Alonso) never materialised suggests the 46-year-old assumes he will be in the country’s hottest seat fairly shortly.
Guardiola shares a close bond with Maresca. It dates back far beyond a meeting in 2022 – Maresca had already been City’s Elite Development Squad’s (EDS) coach – but dinner and likely a bottle of Sassicaia, Guardiola’s favourite red from the Tuscan village of Bolgheri, cemented the Italian as somebody who City should place close attention to.
Manchester City will not be without a manager for long, with their former assistant coach Enzo Maresca (right) set to return to the club in the top job
Maresca shares a close bond with outgoing City boss Pep Guardiola (right), and was his No2 when City won the Treble in 2022-23
The two of them spent the day together at the training ground, discussing ideas and Maresca’s ill-fated first dip into senior management at Parma, the club which he’d left City for months earlier. Guardiola’s impression of his stint with the academy, coaching the likes of Cole Palmer, Liam Delap and Morgan Rogers to a league title, was already strong and the day together saw Maresca’s standing rise further.
The trust of his past season coaching the kids – a role that has significant and daily contact with the first team – helped, given Guardiola could be somewhat picky as to who is greeted with hello and who has the doors thrown wide open for them.
Soon Maresca would be offered the assistant manager’s role. He was No 2 for the Treble season – not a bad achievement to sling on the CV. Maresca followed Guardiola’s work that year, acting as somebody who would replicate the messages during training. A lieutenant in correcting small details in sessions – body shape has always been the big one at City – and those familiar with the set-up say he was more akin to Mikel Arteta in personality around the players than other assistants.
Legendary director of football Txiki Begiristain has spoken to Viana about Maresca in recent months and his own thoughts on the incoming boss were shaped when watching the EDS in 2021, when a team also boasting James McAtee and Taylor Harwood-Bellis finished 14 points clear of second-placed Chelsea.
Begiristain has told Maresca in the past that were he to have joined another club and found Guardiola to have been unavailable, he would be the next choice.
To hear that off one of the sharpest footballing minds in Europe can only embolden a coaching ideal and methods. Meanwhile, Roberto Martinez in his role as a FIFA technical study expert at last year’s Club World Cup final, noted that the triumphant Chelsea side bore very real hallmarks of Luis Enrique’s Paris-Saint Germain team, who are going for consecutive European crowns this Saturday.
City have nearly completely cleared the coaching decks, with set-piece guru James French the only man remaining from Guardiola’s backroom staff.
They had attempted to keep Pep Lijnders, who has decided to go his own way, and aside from his usual trusted staff, Maresca is debating whether to add somebody fresh to the group. Ilkay Gundogan talked up returning as a coach on Monday but in the next breath insisted he still had two or three years left of his playing career.
Maresca with his wife Maria and four children after guiding Chelsea to Club World Cup glory in the US last summer
City will almost completely clear their coaching decks, with Pep Lijnders (centre) and Kolo Toure (right) among the staff set to depart
Maresca has had plenty of time to think, splitting his time between London and the Maldives. On the beach, he had the Adam Wells book Football and Chess for company – as well as a work by 17th century French philosopher Rene Descartes. Hopefully the family took some snorkelling gear.
He’s participated in a symposium with experts from different fields, discussing human behaviour and wanting to learn more about how to communicate with this specific generation of players. Ettore Messina, the renowned Italian basketball coach who was once at the San Antonio Spurs, debated ideas with him – largely about dealing with personalities – while Maresca leant on volleyball coach Julio Velasco, too.
Velasco, 74 now, has a long history with the predecessor at City. Guardiola contacted him when a player at Brescia, at Barca and then during his sabbatical.
‘Julio said you have to be very clear about one thing: don’t try to change the players,’ Guardiola said.
‘The most important thing is knowing how to hit the key for each player. That’s the key to everything. He said he had one volleyball player who loves tactics, they talk for five hours about blocking, but others don’t want to talk about it after two minutes. They don’t care.
‘Some like you to talk about them in front of everyone. It makes them important. Others want to be taken to your office.’
Maresca has been leaning into this over the past six months. Much of that will have been shaped by an ultimately explosive experience at Stamford Bridge, although his stock has only risen since resigning.
Maresca had a successful but explosive tenure at Chelsea – with his stock rising since his departure at the start of the year
It says a lot about his relationships with those around City, the previous manager and then the trust in his own ability that he wants to be the man after The Man.
Vincent Kompany, Roberto De Zerbi and Maresca – all of whom are counted among Guardiola’s disciplines – are the individuals who should follow Enrique in taking the Catalan’s fundamentals of positional play and tweak it, evolve it, with a modern twist.
Maresca’s early work has been solid and resulted in trophies. With a more technical squad, the style should enhance further.
You’d imagine that is exactly why the brains behind the decision honed in on him above some very talented alternatives.
