City Watch: Maresca reign gets underway

For the first time in what feels like an eternity, we finally got to watch Manchester City back in action this weekend as Enzo Maresca took charge of his first match as Blues manager against Inter Milan in Hong Kong.

As pre-season games go, I don’t think there was a great deal to learn from the result itself. 

City eventually lost on penalties after the game finished level, but honestly, I couldn’t care less about that. 

If anything, the performance was far more interesting than the outcome.

The opening half an hour or so was exactly what I was hoping to see as City looked sharp from the first whistle, moved the ball quickly and deservedly took the lead after a really positive start and, in truth, we probably should have been further ahead. 

There were a couple of really promising opportunities that went begging and, against stronger opposition in a competitive game, you’d hope we’d be a little more clinical.

That said, it was difficult to find too many complaints with the way we started. 

We dominated possession, won the ball back quickly whenever we lost it and barely allowed Inter Milan a sight of goal. 

It was aggressive, confident football, and it immediately gave supporters something to be excited about.

What struck me more than anything, though, was just how familiar it all looked. 

There has understandably been plenty of curiosity surrounding what a Manchester City side managed by Enzo Maresca would actually look like. 

Would he completely reinvent the wheel? Would he move away from the Guardiola philosophy? Or would he stick with the principles that have brought so much success over the last decade?

After one game, it appears to be very much the latter as it felt like watching one of Pep Guardiola’s City sides between 2021 and 2023. 

The relentless pressing, the patient build-up, the suffocating control of possession and the way Inter simply couldn’t get out of their own half at times all felt very familiar. 

It was the sort of football City supporters have become accustomed to over the years.

That’s hardly surprising, of course, Maresca spent years learning under Guardiola and has spoken openly about how influential Pep has been on his coaching career. 

Saturday suggested he has taken plenty of those lessons with him, while hopefully adding his own ideas over time.

Unfortunately, the game changed once Inter found their equaliser and it felt as though City lost a little of the control they’d enjoyed for much of the first half. 

The intensity dropped, the game became increasingly scrappy and, by the time the second half got underway, it had turned into exactly what many pre-season friendlies eventually become: a long list of substitutions and very little rhythm.

If I’m being completely honest, the second half was something of a snoozefest; there were flashes of quality here and there, but neither side really grabbed hold of the game and penalties almost felt inevitable by the final whistle. 

Losing the shootout won’t concern Maresca in the slightest, nor should it concern supporters. 

Nobody remembers who won a pre-season penalty shootout in August if the team is lifting trophies in May, what matters far more is that there were enough encouraging signs to suggest City are heading in the right direction.

Of course, it’s still far too early to draw sweeping conclusions from 90 minutes of football in the middle of pre-season. 

Fitness remains the priority, players are still working their way back after the World Cup and there are plenty of new ideas still to implement.

By the time you’re reading this, City will already have faced the K-League All Stars on Wednesday as the pre-season tour continues. 

Hopefully that game will have provided another opportunity for Maresca to build on the positives from the Inter performance and continue embedding the style of football he wants his team to play.

The results over the next couple of weeks really aren’t the best metric to judge on, instead, continued progress, clearer patterns of play and more evidence that this squad is adapting to life under its new manager are true signs of how far this side has to go.

If Saturday’s opening half hour is anything to go by, there are certainly plenty of reasons to be optimistic.