{"id":11445,"date":"2026-05-21T09:47:47","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=11445"},"modified":"2026-05-21T09:47:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:47:47","slug":"pep-guardiola-has-transformed-man-city-into-a-european-powerhouse-but-hiring-enzo-maresca-risks-ruining-legendary-coachs-promising-rebuild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=11445","title":{"rendered":"Pep Guardiola has transformed Man City into a European powerhouse – but hiring Enzo Maresca risks ruining legendary coach’s promising rebuild"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Even during his time in charge of City’s domestic rivals Chelsea, Maresca would speak about Guardiola in glowing terms, and vice versa, calling him a “genius” and revealing his counterpart had actually inspired his coaching career. <\/span><\/p>\n

“I decided to be a manager because of Pep’s team, Barcelona years ago,” he admitted last year. “I don\u2019t think no one can be compared \u2013 this is my personal opinion \u2013 to that Barcelona, and to Pep. Because I think they changed football in Spain, where every club was trying to play in that way.<\/span><\/p>\n

“And then Pep moved to Germany and everyone was trying to play in that way in Germany. I think Pep came in England and many clubs tried to do something similar, and also England in terms of the international team. So I don’t think anyone can be compared to Pep, because I think in the last 20, 25 years he changed football.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Guardiola has had high praise for his former colleague, too. “One of the best managers in the world, Enzo Maresca, I know him quite well, but the job he has done at Chelsea does not get enough credit,” he said earlier this season. “Winning the Club World Cup, Conference League, qualification for the Champions League in a league that is so tough with a young team. It is exceptional.”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even during his time in charge of City’s domestic rivals Chelsea, Maresca would speak about…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}