Manchester City back Maresca's fresh start by clearing out Guardiola's backroom staff

Manchester City have confirmed the departure of five key backroom staff members, clearing the way for incoming manager Enzo Maresca to assemble his own coaching team ahead of the 2025-26 season.

The exits follow Pep Guardiola’s own departure and represent a significant reshaping of the club’s football operation. Rather than asking Maresca to inherit and maintain an existing structure, City are giving him the freedom to build from scratch — a decision that echoes the advice Guardiola himself offered when asked what he would tell his successor.

“Be yourself,” Guardiola said on Sunday. “The club will support you unconditionally and that is the biggest compliment and the biggest luck that all managers here have — Txiki [Begiristain], now Hugo [Viana] and Ferran [Soriano] and especially the work of Khaldoon [Al Mubarak]. Be yourself. You will be protected in the bad moments more than any other club. Be free with your ideas, work a lot and everything will be fine.”

Maresca arrives having left Chelsea, and the contrast in conditions at the two clubs is notable. At City, he is being offered a level of structural support and executive protection that was not afforded to him at Stamford Bridge. That backing does not guarantee results, but it does give the Italian manager a more stable platform from which to impose his own footballing identity.

The challenge is real. Stepping into a role defined by one of the most decorated managers in the sport’s history is daunting under any circumstances, and the simultaneous departure of multiple senior staff compounds the sense of transition. But the alternative — asking Maresca to work within a system built around someone else’s methods — carries its own risks.

City fans have already absorbed considerable change. The squad that won the Treble in 2023 has been gradually dismantled over the past 18 months, and the backroom staff has also evolved significantly during that period. A further wave of personnel changes this summer will test supporters’ patience, but the club’s willingness to let Maresca shape his own environment suggests a clear-eyed approach to the post-Guardiola era rather than an attempt to preserve something that cannot be replicated.