The greatest managerial reign in English football history is ending. Pep Guardiola will leave Manchester City after Sunday’s final game of the season against Aston Villa at the Etihad. Twenty trophies. A decade of dominance. Records that may never be broken.
And the man expected to follow him is Enzo Maresca — a 46-year-old Italian who once sat beside Guardiola in the dugout, studied his methods at close range, and built his own coaching identity in his mentor’s image.
It is not the appointment of a revolutionary. It is the appointment of a continuer. And for Manchester City, that may be exactly the point.
The Decision That Has Been Coming for Months
City’s hierarchy did not wake up last week and start making calls. They have been planning for Guardiola’s departure for more than six months. The process has been deliberate, methodical, and — until now — almost entirely private.
Maresca has been identified as the leading candidate to take over for the 2026-27 season. Talks are at an advanced stage. The Italian wants the job. An announcement is expected in due course.
This is not a panic appointment. City’s Abu Dhabi ownership does not operate that way. Every dimension of this decision will have been examined and re-examined before any commitment was made. The club’s knowledge of Maresca is not theoretical — it is first-hand, built over years of close working contact.
He joined City’s coaching staff before the 2022-23 season. He played a significant role in the academy and contributed to Guardiola’s first team operation in what turned out to be the Treble-winning campaign. When he left in 2023 to manage Leicester, he did so with the club’s blessing and his mentor’s admiration.
He then guided Leicester to immediate Premier League promotion. He moved to Chelsea, where he won the Conference League, the Club World Cup, and secured Champions League qualification — all in a single full season. He did it with a young squad, a possession-based system, and in one of the most competitive and scrutinised leagues in world football.
Guardiola himself has been among his loudest advocates. “One of the best managers in the world,” he said recently. “The job he has done at Chelsea does not get enough credit.”
Why Maresca, and Why Now
The logic of the appointment becomes clear when you understand what City are trying to avoid.
They are not trying to replace Guardiola like-for-like — that is impossible. They are trying to avoid the opposite extreme: appointing someone so different in philosophy and style that everything Guardiola built has to be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch.
Maresca represents a middle path. He thinks about football the way Guardiola thinks about football. His teams build from the back. They control possession. They press with purpose. At Chelsea, he set his side up in a 4-2-3-1 that was recognisable in its structure but flexible in execution — players moved fluidly, roles shifted based on the opponent, and the system adapted without losing its identity.
He is not Guardiola. Nobody is. But he is arguably the closest thing to him currently available in football management — and he has already worked inside the machine he is now being asked to run.
For a club transitioning away from a once-in-a-generation figure, that familiarity is invaluable. Maresca would not need six months to understand the culture, the expectations, or the playing style City have embedded over a decade. He helped build it.
The Chelsea Exit and the Complications That Come With It
The appointment does not arrive without friction. Maresca’s departure from Chelsea in January was not straightforward, and the legal and financial fallout has not been fully resolved.
Chelsea say they are owed compensation under the terms of his exit and are exploring their legal options. Whether that compensation is paid by Manchester City, by Maresca personally, or through some other arrangement remains unclear. The parties are in ongoing discussions.
Chelsea owner Behdad Eghbali offered a carefully worded assessment of the situation last month. “The change wasn’t the club’s decision, for reasons I can’t speak about legally,” he said. “I think the reasons will become kind of clear in due course.”
That ambiguity will not delay City’s appointment. But it adds a layer of complexity to Maresca’s arrival that his predecessors at the Etihad did not have to manage.
There is also the matter of his personality. Maresca can be combative. The fractures at Chelsea — reportedly driven in part by disagreements over transfer policy and operational control — revealed a manager who is not content to operate within constraints he considers unreasonable. At City, where the infrastructure is more aligned and the hierarchy understands his methods, those tensions may never materialise. But they are worth noting.
The Impossibility of the Task
Let the numbers speak plainly. Under Guardiola, Manchester City won twenty trophies in ten years. They became the first English club to win the domestic treble. They won four consecutive Premier League titles. They broke the record for points in a single Premier League season. They won the Champions League.
No manager in English football history has achieved anything comparable over a sustained period. The standards Guardiola set are not a benchmark — they are an aberration. Holding any successor to those standards would be fundamentally unfair.
Maresca knows this. City’s ownership knows this. The question is whether the supporters, shaped by a decade of near-constant success, will grant the patience that any realistic post-Guardiola transition requires.
The comparison that hangs over this appointment is Mikel Arteta. Like Maresca, Arteta was a Guardiola assistant who left City to manage in the Premier League. Like Maresca, he was considered something of a risk when he took over at Arsenal — a relatively inexperienced head coach stepping into enormous shoes. He is now on the verge of delivering Arsenal a Premier League title and a Champions League final. The template exists. It works.
Whether Maresca can follow it is the central question of City’s next chapter.
The Guardiola Factor — and the Kompany Question
There is one further dimension to consider. Guardiola’s endorsement of Maresca is genuine and public. The Catalan does not offer praise lightly, and his support for his former assistant carries real weight within the City boardroom.
But some within the game are asking a different question: is Maresca the destination, or is he the bridge?
Vincent Kompany, the former City captain who is currently managing Bayern Munich, remains a figure of enormous affection and respect within the Etihad. If Kompany delivers success in Bavaria and becomes available in the next few years, the temptation for City to bring home one of their own could prove difficult to resist.
That question does not diminish Maresca’s appointment. It simply places it in a longer context. Guardiola himself spent years building toward a legacy. His successor deserves the same opportunity.
Guardiola’s final game in City’s dugout will be Sunday against Aston Villa. After a decade, the farewell will be laden with emotion — for the manager, for the supporters, and for a club that has been redefined by his presence.
Maresca will then step in. He will inherit a squad that remains among the most expensively assembled in world football. He will work within a structure that Guardiola helped design. He will apply a philosophy that Guardiola himself taught him.
The void Guardiola leaves is real and significant. Nobody should pretend otherwise. But Manchester City have not responded to his departure with panic or improvisation. They have responded with preparation, patience, and a clear-eyed assessment of what they need.
What they need, they have decided, is Enzo Maresca.
He deserves the chance to prove them right.
