Pep Guardiola gave him the lowdown on which Man City stars sulk about being dropped over dinner in Barcelona… now Enzo Maresca is determined to do things his way, writes JACK GAUGHAN

The manager’s office is no more. Converted into a meeting room these days, one still filled by an aura of the guy who bid a teary farewell three months ago. Those walls can talk and Enzo Maresca would rather do his just down the corridor instead.

Maresca, the new Manchester City boss, has taken up permanent residence in the office previously held by a Pep of the Lijnders vintage rather than Guardiola.

The decision, one of his first in the chair, represents a literal embodiment of the reset that Maresca has been preaching to his players during pre-season in Asia. There will be ghosts in that office for some of the squad; there will be fond memories for others. He doesn’t want either emotion stirred from the past to surface as they pass the threshold into his space.

This call is likely to have been spawned from a lengthy meal with Guardiola in Barcelona the day before Maresca moved to the north west. The handover over a bottle or two of Sassicaia, Guardiola giving a rundown of the characteristics of these players, how they react to certain situations – largely not being picked. He’s morose, he fights, that one sulks. The conversation leaned towards personalities over tactics.

‘Useful for me,’ Maresca says. ‘I like to go in empty sometimes, to see things for myself, but he was here for so long and he has his opinions. He will be there (available) but he has to enjoy his holiday. He has to relax, so the idea is not to be calling him all the time. You have to decide which moments are the right time to pick up the phone and talk to him.’

The dynamic will be fascinating. The pair are close, Maresca an assistant during the Treble season before flying the nest for Leicester City and latterly Chelsea, both jobs ultimately successes. Yet Guardiola’s wise enough to keep his distance and has told his successor to speak unfettered publicly. The appointment came with his blessing, Txiki Begiristain’s blessing, but the old guard now have to sit back and watch.

This is a new City. Maresca’s City.

Maresca, the new Manchester City boss, has taken up permanent residence in the office previously held by Pep Lijnders rather than Guardiola

On the seventh floor of Seoul’s Four Seasons, Maresca’s iPhone is pinging with government safety alerts about the ridiculously hot weather, which officially ‘felt like’ 45C during a win over the K-League All Stars. He only got to sleep at 4am and two espressos down – a third is on the way – is holding court, cracking wise and giving an insight into the man who will soon be patrolling the Etihad’s touchline as the club embarks on an intriguing era.

He’s beaming, flashes of the personality his players talk glowingly about but rarely seen in front of the cameras. Temperatures began to ease slightly through the week in South Korea and training has been progressively more encouraging and sharper, the concepts he wants on show during a 3-1 win over Atletico Madrid in the hours before they jetted home. With the big names – Jeremy Doku, Erling Haaland, Rayan Cherki – rejoining the group in Manchester this week, the real business is starting, Arsenal waiting in the Community Shield on Sunday. Rodri’s due back on Friday but Barcelona could have finalised a deal by then.

Haaland was one of the first to contact Maresca when the worst kept secret in football was finally confirmed in the summer. They had kept in touch since 2023 anyway and the Norwegian is going to prove a crucial lieutenant, a link between new and old, forming a quarter of the leadership group. He will not be first-choice captain though. Maresca has his grounds for this: the striker scores way too many goals. Haaland’s relentlessness has done him out of the armband.

‘At Leicester and Chelsea, I had a rule that when we scored, the captain had to come to the bench for instructions,’ Maresca smirks. ‘If Erling is the captain, f****** hell, we have a problem. Can you imagine?

‘If you saw in the game here, Ruben (Dias) came over to the bench. I think even if it is two or three minutes in, there is always something to adjust.’

That little sweary anecdote sets Maresca off. That or the third shot of coffee. He is regaling the initiation songs at dinner a few nights earlier. All of the staff, except himself, performed.

‘They were all s***,’ Maresca roars.

It’s suggested to him that coach Denis Silva’s was not too bad. He vehemently disagrees.

‘Javi (Molina), our analyst… it was a disaster. He was singing My Way, Frank Sinatra! You are already bad, go for an easy one. Ah actually, the best one was Michele (De Bernardin), our goalkeeping coach – he was very good.’

Haaland will not be Maresca’s first-choice captain on the basis that the Norwegian striker scores too many goals

High standards, even with the microphone. The idea behind bringing in the Englishman on his staff, Danny Walker, is raised. Walker was an academy coach at City before Maresca was appointed as the Elite Development Squad’s boss during Covid. The pair were thrown together when Begiristain said the Italian couldn’t bring in his own assistant – even though the man in question, Marcos Alvarez (now on Maresca’s staff), was Catalan. Walker and Maresca have been inseparable ever since.

‘F****** hell, Danny Walker!’ Maresca laughs. ‘We go for breakfast and it is beans on toast, we go for dinner and it is a beer!’

But there is a reason why he is here beyond having worked with the likes of Nico O’Reilly and Rico Lewis when they were kids.

‘Danny is good on extra work at the end when we keep players doing something extra. I have six, seven people with me and not one of them is there because I feel they are just a friend. It is demanding. If we don’t win games, we are all going home. That is good. I have Willy (Caballero) from Argentina, two Italian guys, one English, three Spanish. So we can speak all the languages. I speak French so we have it covered.’

In training sessions, Walker is the energetic sidekick to Maresca, who himself is fully immersed in the middle of drills, directing traffic and demanding exactly how City should build the play and move the ball.

This has been an obsession across the opening weeks of his tenure: finding ways of navigating opposition who go man-to-man, a tactic that has consumed the game at the highest level over the past two seasons. Maresca studied various plans over the six months between resigning in acrimony at Chelsea and taking over from Guardiola.

‘I was focused on not watching many games but I watched teams against man-to-man – it was more focused than watching general football,’ he explains.

‘Everyone goes man-to-man. I’m not sure it’s going to continue like that. For instance, if you see last season when Newcastle played Barcelona and it was 6-1. Atalanta and Bayern Munich was 6-1. Chelsea tried to go man-to-man with PSG (in March) and they destroyed them.

‘The games from last season, when (underdogs) tried to do it against big teams, they concede many goals.’

PSG are the ideal reference point: a side built on adaptability and runners carrying the ball, which is why Antoine Semenyo should thrive under similar instructions

PSG are the ideal, although that is obvious given the consecutive Champions League titles and a general fearlessness to their play. An adaptability with runners on the ball, which is why Antoine Semenyo ought to flourish under similar instructions. He certainly has in Seoul over the past week.

It is therefore no surprise that Ettore Messina, the renowned Italian basketball coach who was once at the San Antonio Spurs, knocked around some ideas with Maresca a few months back. Those will have strayed into tactical, given the two sports are beginning to collide.

Maresca’s primary focus is on these tweaks to the system and messaging. While improving their set-piece record is on the agenda, it is not a priority. ‘Probably Arsenal rely on set pieces a lot,’ Maresca says. ‘They use different strategies to win games (to City). Set pieces is the big change in the Premier League.

‘I tried to enjoy a little bit more time with the family and then I did two AI masterclasses because it’s like now everyone goes man to man, everyone is talking about AI. I wanted to understand how it works and have more knowledge.’

One class came in general use of AI – and in turn, communicating with a younger generation – and the other more specific on how it can be implemented into the technical side of football. Even after all that, Maresca laughs that he is unable to explain the basics of the technology.

He wants to move with the times and certainly times have changed in Manchester since his departure in 2023. His favourite Italian, Salvi’s, has shut. Vero Moderno is the new haunt, often frequented by Gianluigi Donnarumma and there have been bonding meals with staff already.

Maresca would prefer to live in the city centre, like Guardiola, but moving out towards Cheshire is more sensible with a family consisting of four kids under 13 whose accents are all English. A seven o’clock dinner at home with them is considered sacrosanct.

He will need that sanctity. This is an unknown, uncharted territory. They are only too aware of what happened across town but there is a calm, a certainty, to the way Maresca wants to do this and negotiate his way through what cannot be an easy task.

‘I know people will be comparing it to Pep after 10 games,’ he says, doing well not to reference that Guardiola won all 10 of those. ‘It doesn’t put pressure on me. I’ve said many times that he’s the best manager in the world over the last 20 years.

‘Someone asked me if it’s the impossible job to follow him. Maybe, but at the same time it’s a privilege.’