They call it the impossible job. Enzo Maresca is now the latest figure asked to live after a decade of Pep Guardiola\u2019s dominance, with Manchester City entering a new phase under a former Guardiola assistant.<\/p>\n
History suggests the task is rarely straightforward, even when a club has the advantage of continuity. The most successful handovers usually involve a close working link and a squad that remains largely intact. Maresca, by contrast, has inherited a City side that has changed considerably over the past two years, with several familiar names from the Guardiola era moving on.<\/p>\n
The idea of a successor stepping into an established machine is hardly new. Barcelona \u2019B\u2019, later renamed Barcelona Atl\u00e8tic, provided Guardiola\u2019s own launching pad, and Luis Enrique followed him there. Enrique arrived after a playing career that had taken him through both sides of the Cl\u00e1sico divide, and when he took charge in 2008 he said: “I have come home.”<\/p>\n
His spell did not carry the same weight of expectation as Guardiola\u2019s later appointments, but it was still effective. Enrique guided the side to promotion to the Segunda in his second season and then to a playoff place in 2010-11, finishing with 71 points. Sergi Roberto, Marc Bartra and Thiago Alc\u00e1ntara were among the players to emerge under him before he departed for Roma in 2011.<\/p>\n
A far heavier burden arrived when Tito Vilanova succeeded Guardiola at Barcelona in 2012. Guardiola had delivered 14 major honours in four years, including two Champions Leagues and three La Ligas, before the strain of Jos\u00e9 Mourinho\u2019s psychological warfare helped bring that era to a close. Vilanova handled the shift smoothly at first, winning 23 of his opening 25 La Liga matches and leading the division from start to finish, matching Madrid\u2019s record 100-point haul from the previous season. His reign was later cut short by illness, and he died aged 45 in 2014.<\/p>\n
Guardiola\u2019s time at Bayern Munich followed a different pattern. The club had already been reshaped by Louis van Gaal and then Jupp Heynckes before the Spaniard arrived, and Guardiola delivered three straight league titles and two DFB-Pokals, though three Champions League semifinal exits left a sense of incompleteness.<\/p>\n
Bayern then turned to Carlo Ancelotti, hoping his experience would preserve what had been built. Domestic success continued, but the Champions League brought a step back, with defeat to Real Madrid in the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola\u2019s successors have faced different tests, from Barcelona to Bayern Munich and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18538,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1017,1062,238],"tags":[1047,182],"class_list":["post-18539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barcelona","category-bayern-munich","category-manchester-city","tag-champions-league","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18539","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=18539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}