Articles

July 25, 2026

Enzo Maresca called it a privilege. Fine. Every new manager says something like that. What actually tells you who Maresca is, and what he thinks matters, is the decision to be inside Manchester City's training ground in mid-July—weeks before most Premier League clubs have even thought about pre-season—while the transfer window fizzes around him and the press waits for a marquee name to justify the summer.

He hasn't given them one. Not yet. And that might be the point.

This is a club coming off thirteen years of Pep Guardiola, a tenure defined by perpetual, almost restless reinvention. New fullbacks. Inverted wingers becoming false nines. A holding midfielder transformed into something no one had a word for. Guardiola's City evolved constantly, and the squad evolved with it, because that's how Guardiola stays ahead—he changes before you've figured out the last change. It worked. Brilliantly, repeatedly, historically.

Maresca is not doing that. Or at least, not yet. What he's doing instead looks almost contrary: arriving early, going quiet on transfers, learning the building before he decides what to knock down. The bet is that City's foundations are good enough—deep enough—that understanding them properly beats disrupting them for the sake of looking decisive.

Phil Foden is the best argument Maresca has, even if Foden never intended to be an argument for anything other than football.

Foden didn't walk through the door at the Etihad as a finished player. He walked through as a teenager from Stockport with extraordinary potential and absolutely no guarantee it would become extraordinary football. What turned him into one of the best players in the world wasn't a transfer. It was time. Trust. A coaching environment that kept developing him rather than replacing him when something shinier appeared. Years of patience, and then—eventually—an unmistakable peak. The kind of player who wins the Ballon d'Or shortlist, not because City bought him that status, but because they grew it.

That's the philosophy Maresca seems to be reaching for. Not revolution. Depth. Not a parade of new names but a harder, less glamorous question: what does this squad actually need, once you really know it?

He won't have infinite time to answer it. Liverpool are building. Arsenal still believe this is their moment. Chelsea will spend, because Chelsea always spend. The pressure to make noise in the window is real, and at some point Maresca will have to make signings that satisfy a fanbase trained by Guardiola to expect reinforcement every summer.

But the early start buys him something no transfer fee can: clarity. The ability to separate what genuinely needs fixing from what just looks unfamiliar against the previous regime's methods. That distinction is more valuable than it sounds. New managers get it wrong all the time—shipping players who didn't fit their first impression, only to spend the next two windows trying to replace what they had.

Maresca is trying to avoid that trap before it closes.

If it works—if the head start translates into a squad that understands what he wants before a ball is kicked in anger—then City's summer won't be remembered for whoever they signed in August. It'll be remembered for the weeks in July when the new manager showed up early and got to work. Quietly. Without fanfare.

Foden didn't need a headline to become world-class. Maybe the manager trying to get the best out of him doesn't either.