When Manchester City announced Enzo Maresca as their new manager on a three-year deal this week, it capped off a coaching rise that’s been anything but linear. The 46-year-old Italian has worked under Pep Guardiola, won a Championship title at Leicester, hoisted two trophies at Chelsea in one season, and somehow still found time to coach City’s Under-21s to a record-breaking Premier League 2 crown.
People forget that Maresca’s first real coaching break came back in 2020, when City hired him to run their Elite Development Squad. That team was stacked. Cole Palmer, James McAtee, Liam Delap, Morgan Rogers — all of them played for Maresca that season. And they didn’t just win the PL2 title. They crushed it by the biggest points margin ever. The kid gloves came off early, and the football was fun to watch. That’s where the reputation started.
He left for a short, rocky spell at Parma in Italy. It didn’t work. But Guardiola brought him back to Manchester in 2022 as a first-team assistant. That turned out to be the 2022/23 Treble season — Premier League, FA Cup, Champions League. Maresca was in the room for all of it. People who were there say his tactical input was legit, not just a warm body on the bench.
Leicester and Chelsea: Two Very Different Prove-It Moments
The Foxes hired him in 2023 right after getting relegated. Maresca walked in and won the Championship by a mile. Leicester went right back up, playing the kind of controlled, possession-heavy soccer that makes purists happy and opponents miserable. It wasn’t just promotion — it was a statement about how he wants his teams to look.
Chelsea came calling in 2024. Big club, big pressure, big money everywhere. Maresca handled it. In his first season at Stamford Bridge, he brought home the UEFA Conference League — a 4-1 win over Real Betis in the final — and then the FIFA Club World Cup in the U.S., where his team dismantled European champs Paris Saint-Germain 3-0 in New York. That PSG win turned heads because it wasn’t a fluke. Chelsea outplayed them from start to finish.
The Playing Days That Nobody Talks About
Before any of this, Maresca was a midfielder. A good one. He played at West Brom (cult hero status there), then Juventus, Fiorentina, Sevilla, Malaga, Olympiakos. He won a Serie A title, two UEFA Cups, a UEFA Super Cup, a Copa del Rey, a Supercopa de Espana. Not bad for a guy who was never the biggest star on the team sheet.
Along the way he soaked up knowledge from Carlo Ancelotti, Marcello Lippi, Juande Ramos, Dino Zoff, Zico, and Manuel Pellegrini. That coaching tree is about as deep as it gets. Pellegrini was the one who had him at Malaga, and that connection probably helped Maresca understand the City system before he ever walked through the CFA doors.
Now he’s back at City, this time as the guy in charge. The roster is older. The expectations haven’t changed. And if his track record tells you anything, it’s that Maresca usually figures out a way to make the moment count.
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