12 May 2026 07:14 BST |<\/span> Cameron Smith Accredited sports journalist covering football since 2020 <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Enzo Maresca insists that he \u201cfeels ready for the next chapter\u201d following his departure from Chelsea by mutual consent on New Year\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n The Italian guided Chelsea to Europa Conference League and Club World Cup glory during his debut season at the helm last year, while he also secured Champions League qualification for the first time since 2022.<\/p>\n However, tensions with the club\u2019s hierarchy grew after being denied the chance to sign a suitable replacement for Levi Colwill after the Englishman\u2019s anterior cruciate ligament injury in August, and he subsequently initiated early talks with Juventus and Manchester City.<\/p>\n Upon revealing this to the Chelsea board, Maresca\u2019s position at the club soon became untenable and after only one win in his final seven Premier League games in charge, he left Stamford Bridge on 1 January.<\/p>\n While his successor Liam Rosenior has already been sacked by the Blues, Maresca remains on the market and he has been widely tipped to replace Pep Guardiola at Man City if the legendary Spaniard opts to leave the Etihad Stadium following the conclusion of this season.<\/p>\n The 46-year-old was Guardiola\u2019s assistant manager during Man City\u2019s treble-winning campaign in 2022-23 and he is the clear frontrunner for the main job ahead of this summer.<\/p>\n During an appearance on Sky Sport Italia, Maresca confirmed that he plans to return to management this summer, while he also refused to brush off links with Man City entirely.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel ready for the next chapter, that is the most important thing,\u201d Maresca admitted (via Football Italia<\/b>).<\/p>\n When asked specifically about a possible move back to Man City, he added: \u201cWhat matters, regardless of the club, is being ready. There are only a few weeks left until the end of the season, then we\u2019ll see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n Maresca, who guided Leicester City to the Championship title before joining Chelsea in 2024, has a 60% win rate during his senior management career to date and a move to Man City is expected to be finalised if Guardiola departs.<\/p>\n Ornstein confirms ‘positive’ Chelsea talks: Xabi Alonso makes preference clear<\/b><\/p>\n The 10 superstars set to dominate the 2026 summer transfer window<\/b><\/p>\n Transfer Rumours: Chelsea favourites to sign striker as Man Utd learn Kroupi ‘concern’<\/b><\/p>\n Check out FootballTransfers’ new app for all of football’s big storylines, transfer rumours and exclusive news in one convenient place directly on your mobile device.<\/p>\n The FootballTransfers app is available on Google Play and in the Apple App Store. Download here:<\/p>\n \u2022Google Play<\/b><\/p>\n \u2022App Store<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 12 May 2026 07:14 BST | 4 min read \u00a9 IMAGO Cameron Smith | Digital…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8104","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=8104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Enzo Maresca breaks silence on Man City interest<\/h2>\n
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