Man City’s ‘Three-Man Shortlist’ to Follow Pep Guardiola—Ranked

All under consideration have worked with Pep Guardiola at some point in their careers.

Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City future is uncertain. | Oli SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images, Visionhaus/Getty Images

Manchester City are reportedly planning for Pep Guardiola’s exit this summer and have drawn up a shortlist which includes Xabi Alonso, Enzo Maresca and Cesc Fàbregas.

Guardiola signed a two-year contract extension during the beginning of last season’s damaging dip in form to theoretically keep him at the Etihad until the summer of 2027. The Catalan coach has wearily reiterated this fact when pushed on his future, yet reports of his potential exit continue to surface.

The Premier League’s rival managers are thought to privately consider this to be Guardiola’s last season, according to The Times. City’s search for a successor clearly hints at some form of uncertainty from those in Manchester.

Former Chelsea boss Maresca is a known target and finds himself on a shortlist which also includes ex-Real Madrid coach Alonso and Como’s highly regarded Fàbregas, per The Telegraph.

All three have experience of working with Guardiola in some capacity but they represent a trio of wildly different profiles, demonstrating the lengths City are taking to somehow find a way of replacing the most influential and successful manager of his generation, if not any other. It is a daunting task.

---

3. Enzo Maresca

Enzo Maresca (left) used to work as Pep Guardiola’s assistant at Manchester City. | Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC/Getty Images

Age: 45
Clubs: Parma, Leicester, Chelsea
Matches: 169
Preferred Formation: 4-2-3-1
Honours: Club World Cup, Conference League, Championship

Maresca’s flirtation with City’s potentially vacant managerial position was so pronounced it played into his Chelsea exit. However, there were other factors in that very public breakdown which may give City cause for concern.

As a fully signed up disciple of the Guardiola doctrine, Maresca fits the tactical bill on surface level. As he demonstrated on several marquee occasions for Chelsea—particularly last summer's Club World Cup final—the Italian schemer can devise a bespoke ploy to derail any opponent. Maresca’s ceiling is undoubtedly high, but his floor can drop quite low.

A large portion of Chelsea fans never got onboard with Maresca’s quest for pedestrian control in most fixtures. “If you attack quick, you are going to concede a quick attack and it’s not our idea, it’s not our football,” he infamously insisted.

City are becoming an increasingly swift in their forward thrusts, with a clear shift towards the recruitment of rapid dribblers in recent years. This leads us to our next issue with Maresca: control off the pitch.

Manchester City operate with a pronounced sporting director model—precisely the one which Maresca so vehemently railed against (even if Chelsea do have five figures for this role, compared to City’s one). Given his standing within the game, Guardiola had some say on transfers which his former assistant will not be afforded. City may be inclined to avoid going down that problematic avenue.

---

2. Xabi Alonso

Pep Guardiola (left) worked with Xabi Alonso at Bayern Munich. | Lars Baron/Bongarts/Getty Images

Age: 44
Clubs: Bayer Leverkusen, Real Madrid
Matches: 174
Preferred Formation: 3-4-2-1
Honours: Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal, DFL-Supercup

Getting sacked by Real Madrid should not be a permanent black mark against any manager. This is a club which cycles through almost any coach not named Carlo Ancelotti or Zinedine Zidane.

The rest of Europe clearly hold this view, with Liverpool already reportedly sounding out their former midfielder. After putting together a staggering résumé at Bayer Leverkusen with an unbeaten domestic campaign in 2023–24, Alonso was the darling of the managerial market.

His stock has undoubtedly dipped over the past 18 months and not without some justification. While the exact problems he faced at Real Madrid may not be repeated—City’s stars are already willing to press and listen to detailed video sessions—his failure to identify any solutions may be a concern.

---

1. Cesc Fàbregas

Cesc Fàbregas’s Como are on fire. | Marco Luzzani/Getty Images

Age: 38
Clubs: Como
Matches: 70
Preferred Formation: 4-2-3-1
Honours: N/A

Cesc Fàbregas is the most inexperienced of the trio and the most exciting. Guardiola’s former Barcelona midfielder, who idolised the Catalan coach as a player while growing up, has got Como playing a thrilling brand of full-throttle football in Serie A.

After securing an impressive top-half finish in the club’s first season following promotion last term, the upwardly mobile outfit currently lie within the division’s top six—and that feels as though it’s doing them a disservice. Como rank fourth for expected goals for and against, while they boast the second-best actual defensive record in the notoriously stingy division.

Despite playing in the Spain team which was defined by sterile tiki-taka, Fàbregas has his own unique style honed throughout an unrivalled wealth of playing experiences.

“[As a player] I won with Antonio Conte, I won with [José] Mourinho, I won with [Arsène] Wenger, I won with [Pep] Guardiola,” he has declared. “I won with every different style of play. You’ll never hear me say that one works and another doesn’t. If you only care about the result, you can still lose a lot. And when it’s all ‘play the ball, play the ball’ you can lose a lot that way too.”

It would be fascinating to see how Fàbregas would go about implementing his versatile approach with City’s superior calibre of player. If Guardiola leaves, of course.

---