How Enzo Maresca’s Manchester City compare with Pep Guardiola’s side
Enzo Maresca, Manchester City's manager, has begun shaping the team during pre-season after taking over from Pep Guardiola following Guardiola's 10-year spell, with early matches already showing both continuity and tactical differences.
Pep Guardiola is not portrayed as wedded to a single system but rather to principles: keeping possession high, operating far from his own goal and close to the opponent’s, and organising play around positional play and what the article calls good "rest defence". Domenec Torrent, a long-time assistant of Guardiola's, described positional play as "how you place yourself in relation to others on the field when you have the ball, and where you should be so that you can continue pressing when you lose it". Maresca’s City have adopted many of these principles, recording 64% possession in their first game against Inter Milan and using structured positional roles rather than free roaming.
Maresca has set City up in a 3-2-2-3 shape in possession, a system he also employed at Chelsea, which keeps three ball-playing defenders as the first line and deploys two midfielders ahead of them to progress play and screen the defence. In attack City often retain four or five players behind the ball — described as the three defenders and the holding midfielders — to maintain a rest defence and protect against counter-attacks. The setup asks wingers to remain high and wide as part of a relatively rigid positional structure aimed at creating repeatable wide overloads.
Winger play has been a clear emphasis in pre-season. Nico Gonzalez said: "I think the idea is clear," he said. "We try to arrive to the wingers. We have a lot of quality in wingers." Maresca’s use of wide wingers contrasts with Guardiola’s later tendency to use them narrowly, a tactic Guardiola discussed in Marti Perarnau's book when recalling the 2016-17 season: "It's a difficult process. You can't just talk to [the wingers] and expect everything to happen. "My first challenge is to convince [the wingers]. Just stay there on the wing, stay wide. Bide your time, be patient and your moment will come. "Then, when you do get your chance, think about it, how many opponents am I going to have to get past? "We've come up with this whole strategy so that you, the winger, only have to dribble past one man and sometimes there will be nobody in your way. On the other hand, if you stop paying attention and drift into the middle, how many will you have to get past? Four!" Antoine Semenyo has been prominent on the flank in pre-season, often arriving close to the box to cut back for forwards, with Omar Marmoush shown timing a run to tap in such a cross in the examples cited.
Inside the formation Maresca has given one midfielder licence to join attacks — the article cites Tijjani Reijnders operating forward with Matteo Kovacic sitting deeper — and has used full-backs to move into central attacking positions. Rico Lewis is noted to have inverted from right-back into midfield to help transition from a back four into the attacking shape, while Josko Gvardiol has been pushed from left-back into a left attacking-midfield role in possession. Both Gvardiol and Nico O'Reilly have contributed to goals by starting from full-back and arriving in the box, a pattern the piece says viewers will likely see during the season.
Defensively Maresca’s approach with City differs from his Chelsea work: at Chelsea he mainly used a man-to-man press high up the pitch, whereas pre-season City have defended high in a more zonal manner, often starting from a 4-2-4 base before triggering selective presses. The article illustrates this with the front four holding a zonal shape until Phil Foden presses the goalkeeper. Maresca said: "Usually the team that was defending found the solution by going man-to-man. Now the teams that try to build up are trying to find solutions against man-to-man. I don't know when but there is going to be a bit of change." Pre-season exposed weaknesses in this approach, with midfielders and full-backs sometimes covering large distances and leaving gaps, a situation the article notes typically improves as players adapt and physical condition rises.
The piece concludes that Maresca's appointment brings continuity in identity and principles from the Guardiola era—citing the 3-2-2-3 shape used during City's treble, the focus on high, wide wingers and cut-backs from the club's centurion season, and the previous season's use of full-backs moving infield and a 4-2-4 defensive shape—while asserting that Maresca's system remains distinct as City begin a new chapter.
