Maresca's Bold Gamble Pays Off for Manchester City
Enzo Maresca was supposed to play it safe. First Premier League game in charge of Manchester City, bruised by Arsenal in the Community Shield, questions already circling. Keep your head down, pick a straightforward XI, ease into the job.
He did the opposite.
Maresca named a side with six players comfortable as defenders and then pushed Marc Guehi, an England centre-back by trade, into the role usually reserved for the metronomes and schemers. A holding midfielder. At the Etihad. On day one.
For 84 minutes, it looked like a miscalculation that would detonate under the floodlights.
City, still smarting from that 3-0 defeat by Arsenal a week earlier, laboured again. With Manchester United and Tottenham already under fire after their own opening-day collapses, the narrative felt ready to swivel sharply towards the blue half of Manchester. Another setback, another round of soul-searching, another inquest into life after Pep Guardiola and Rodri.
Then Guehi rose, and the entire story flipped.
Maresca’s gamble
The first hints of Maresca’s plan surfaced during the warm-up. While the back four went through their drills with a City coach, Guehi drifted away from them, stationed higher, receiving balls like a pivot rather than a stopper. It wasn’t a decoy. When referee Jarred Gillett blew for kick-off, the suspicion hardened into fact: Guehi was City’s holding midfielder.
Eyebrows went up in the stands and in the studios. Pundits questioned it. Supporters did the same. So did the player, privately.
“It was just an idea the manager had, we worked on it in the week,” Guehi told Sky Sports. “We’re trying different things, trying different solutions for the team. I’m glad today it paid off in the end.”
He admitted to BBC Sport that he had “not played in midfield too often”, but said he enjoyed it because of the support around him: “I got so much help from so many people. When you have that you feel comfortable to just go out and play and do what you can for the team.”
Maresca had seen something long before this week.
“Marc Guehi has never played as a midfielder, today he was very good, so I am happy with the effort from the players,” the City boss told BBC Match of the Day. “Sometimes you visualise things. I know Marc from Palace and I always thought he could play as a midfielder because he is very good. So we tried it for a few days and I think he was quite good.”
Quite good was an understatement.
Numbers to back the narrative
Guehi didn’t just survive in midfield. He shaped the game.
He won all three of his tackles – no one on the pitch managed more. He completed 94.9% of his 59 passes, knitting City’s play together. He came out on top in eight of his 11 duels. And, when City were staring at another damaging result, he produced the moment that changed everything.
On 84 minutes, with Bournemouth close to a famous result, Guehi surged into the box and powered in the 10th Premier League goal of his career, a towering header that dragged City level and yanked the mood inside the Etihad back from the brink.
The pressure that had been building on Maresca suddenly broke. City surged again. Josko Gvardiol, ice-cool in front of goal, completed the turnaround with a composed finish to seal an unlikely comeback win.
Just like that, the “curious” team selection became a masterstroke.
Asked where he might line up next week, Guehi laughed: “Who knows? Maybe up front. We’ll see.”
Maresca, though, sounded anything but flippant. He described Guehi as “a solution” in midfield and hinted this might be more than a one-off experiment.
A message from the bench – and from the boardroom
There was another twist buried in that team sheet. Mateo Kovacic, a natural midfielder, started on the bench. In a squad already stripped of Rodri, now at Barcelona after winning the 2024 Ballon d’Or, and Tijjani Reijnders, who has departed for Saudi Arabia, that decision carried weight.
Was Maresca sending a message upstairs?
The Italian has been clear since replacing Guardiola that he wants reinforcements before the transfer window shuts on 1 September. City’s hierarchy appeared to respond in real time. Just under an hour before kick-off, BBC Sport reported that the club had agreed an £86m fee with Lille for Ayyoub Bouaddi.
Maresca said afterwards he knew nothing about the deal yet, having not spoken to the decision-makers. But the scale of the move tells its own story. Bouaddi is only 18, a Moroccan midfielder with a huge price tag and an even bigger task: step into a City side that has lost its midfield anchor and help define a new era.
He is expected to operate in the pivot alongside club-record signing Elliot Anderson. The former Newcastle midfielder made his Premier League debut for City here, playing an hour, covering ground, closing space, and offering glimpses of the energy and aggression he will bring.
On this day, though, it was his makeshift partner who stole the spotlight.
City in flux, still expected to win
For all the tactical tinkering and the sense of transition, City still did what City are supposed to do: they found a way.
Former City goalkeeper Joe Hart captured that tension between upheaval and expectation. “I think City look OK,” he said. “It’s obviously interesting when they have had such settled world class players that they have almost mixed and matched.
“Anderson and Guehi is an interesting one in midfield but that won’t be a long-term thing, especially with Bouaddi coming in. I think with people coming back late from the World Cup, Maresca is just trying out things in-season, in-game.
“That’s just where Manchester City are at the moment, they’ve completely changed everything about themselves but they’re still expected to win.”
On Sunday, they did. Not with the effortless control of the Guardiola years, not with Rodri dictating every tempo shift, but with a centre-back reinvented as a midfielder, a late rescue act, and a manager willing to rip up the script on his first day.
If this is what Maresca’s City looks like in week one, what happens when Bouaddi walks through the door and the pieces finally settle?
