Maresca faces pre-season puzzle as up to 17 City players set to stay deep in World Cup

Enzo Maresca is already confronting one of the more awkward logistical challenges of his first summer in charge of Manchester City, with up to 17 first-team players on course to still be competing at the World Cup when the club’s pre-season tour begins.

City sent more players to the tournament than any other club, and the majority look set to survive the group stage. Only a handful of results — most notably Uzbekistan’s clash with DR Congo and Algeria’s meeting with Austria — offer Maresca a realistic chance of seeing any of his squad exit in the groups. Defender Abdukodir Khusanov is part of the Uzbekistan squad, while Rayan Ait-Nouri is involved with Algeria, who already have three points but currently sit third in their group.

The scheduling tension centres on City’s planned pre-season tour to Hong Kong in the final week of July. The World Cup’s last-16 stage begins roughly a week before that departure date, meaning any player who reaches the knockout rounds would have only around four weeks between their elimination and the tour — the minimum rest period recommended by FIFPro, the global players’ union. If that guidance is followed, City could be without between 13 and 17 players for the Hong Kong trip.

Maresca must now decide how strictly to apply those rest recommendations. His predecessor Pep Guardiola was known for giving his squad generous recovery time after international tournaments, and cutting short players’ summers to fly them across the world for pre-season friendlies risks an early friction with a squad still adjusting to new management.

The new head coach is not expected to learn anything tactically new from watching his players at the World Cup — he knows them well. But the longer they stay in the tournament, the tighter his preparation window becomes before the Premier League season opens. It is a tension that has no clean solution, and one Maresca will have to manage carefully as he begins the considerable task of succeeding Guardiola at the Etihad.