Enzo Maresca has spent the break setting out how he sees Manchester City's next phase, and he is not trying to hide from the Pep Guardiola shadow. Chosen as Guardiola’s successor after serving as his assistant during the Treble-winning 2022-23 campaign, he met Guardiola in Barcelona a day before he officially signed as his replacement. His message is simple enough: the comparison is inevitable, but it does not unsettle him.
"After 10 games, if we have got 10 points, 20 points, 30 points. People will be comparing it to Pep after 10 games, it doesn't put pressure on me," Maresca told BBC Sport.
Guardiola's shadow and Maresca's method
That is why the AI detail matters less as a gimmick than as a clue to how he is approaching the job. Maresca said, "And everyone is talking about AI, so I want to understand how it works. So I did two masterclasses to understand it a little bit more and have more knowledge."
He is also clear about the broader football picture he is stepping into. "When he started in Spain, everyone wanted to play like Barcelona, he moved to Germany everyone wanted to play like Bayern [Munich], he comes to England and everyone wants to play like City," he said.
City's tactical reset
Maresca says the biggest Premier League change since he was last a City assistant is the rise in set-pieces and man-to-man defending. He also thinks the league's level of competition has gone up, pointing to the quality of players, managers and organisation across the division.
The dead-ball evidence is easy to see. Arsenal scored 25 goals from set-pieces last season, and 19 of those came from corners. Maresca's point is not a throwaway line, it is part of how the league now works, with margins increasingly decided by routines and by players who can handle duels all over the pitch.
That fits the challenge around Erling Haaland as well. Guardiola had already said City "cannot play a false nine with him" and that the team must "adapt some movements". Haaland has 7 goals in 5 appearances this season and a 7.94 average rating across those games, which is a strong start, but Maresca's task is not to make everything about one forward. It is to make the rest of the side carry more of the load too.
For now, the shape of his early message is clear. He is treating the job as a privilege, not a burden, and he is already talking about City in a language shaped by AI, set-pieces and a league that demands more from every position.
Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 2 outlets. How we work →
