Maresca and Foden preview City's Champions League trip to RB Leipzig after back-to-back Premier League defeats

Manchester City head to RB Leipzig on Wednesday for their fourth Champions League league-phase fixture, with Enzo Maresca and Phil Foden speaking to the press on Tuesday evening to preview the tie in Germany.

City arrive in Leipzig having lost back-to-back Premier League matches against Aston Villa and Brighton, though they did eliminate the Seagulls on penalties in the Carabao Cup last midweek. In Europe, Maresca’s side sit 10th in the expanded league-phase table with six points from three games, following a comfortable win over AEK Athens.

On the injury front, the squad is almost entirely fit. Antoine Semenyo remains the only senior absentee, sidelined until December with a knee injury. City trained with a 23-man group on Tuesday before flying to Germany, with Ryan McAidoo and Kaden Braithwaite absent from the session, though Floyd Samba was present.

The RB Leipzig head coach offered warm words for his opposite number ahead of the match, describing a close personal bond with Maresca. “We know each other very well and we’re almost like brothers,” he said. “I know his philosophy and how he wants to play. Enzo is a winner and he’ll be looking to win trophies with Manchester City. I had three fantastic years at Manchester City myself, but that was a long time ago. Being a coach is a completely different job.”

One subplot heading into the fixture is how Maresca deploys attacking midfielder Rayan Cherki. The player’s former manager Pep Guardiola was candid about the challenge of managing Cherki’s instinctive, roaming style, and the question of how to balance his individual expression with collective structure has followed the midfielder into the new regime. Maresca, like Guardiola before him, has been working through that same tension as City look to get the best out of one of their most unpredictable attacking options.