Manchester City have moved to settle the financial and legal issues blocking Enzo Maresca\u2019s arrival, with reports indicating a payment of $22.8 million to Chelsea. A verbal agreement between City and Maresca has been in place for almost a month, with Maresca expected to sign a three-year contract to take over for Pep Guardiola at Etihad Stadium.<\/p>\n
Maresca\u2019s coaching path is well documented. He was Guardiola\u2019s assistant during City\u2019s treble-winning campaign in 2022\u201323, left to manage Leicester City and guided them back to the Premier League in 2023\u201324, and then joined Chelsea in the summer of 2024. His time at Stamford Bridge lasted one and a half seasons and ended abruptly on New Year\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n
Maresca left Chelsea with three and a half years remaining on the five-year deal he signed in 2024. Chelsea did not frame his departure as an outright sacking. \u201cChelsea Football Club and Head Coach Enzo Maresca have parted company,\u201d the club\u2019s statement read . \u201cWith key objectives still to play for across four competitions including qualification for Champions League football, Enzo and the Club believe a change gives the team the best chance of getting the season back on track.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reports also say City and Maresca entered negotiations while he was still Chelsea manager and without the Blues\u2019 permission. That prompted Chelsea to consider reporting City to the Premier League for an illegal approach and to weigh legal action against Maresca for breach of contract.<\/p>\n
City appear prepared to meet Chelsea\u2019s demand to resolve the dispute and complete the hire. The $22.8 million figure is notably higher than an earlier reported $13 million (\u00a310 million). According to ESPN, a settlement is close and Maresca could be officially unveiled as City\u2019s new manager as early as this week.<\/p>\n
Chelsea will receive a significant fee at a time they need funds after failing to qualify for European competition next season. City, for their part, expect Maresca to assume the challenge of succeeding Guardiola and to lead the Sky Blues into their next phase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Man City set to pay $22.8m to Chelsea to settle Enzo Maresca move and finalise his three-year deal .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15159,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,1056],"tags":[1505,983,1757],"class_list":["post-15160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-man-city","tag-accountability","tag-agents","tag-compensation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}