Maresca may be the best candidate to preserve his Man City legacy if Pep leaves.

The heirs have tended to be apparent. 

At Barcelona, Tito Vilanova served as an assistant for four years before his coronation. Luis Enrique, the former midfield partner and successor at Barcelona B, continued the faith. After a four-year break in the lineage, they returned to it with a player who distilled the ideas on the pitch better than anyone: Xavi Hernandez.

Even at Bayern Munich, eight years after his spell in Germany had ended, they sought his validation before appointing Vincent Kompany because he had been his captain at Manchester City for three years and espoused a style of play at relegated Burnley clearly rooted in those principles.

The students became the masters. Pep Guardiola has moulded the disciples who espouse his beliefs to the next generation, just as he did with the teachings of Johan Cruyff.

But one question has remained unclear in recent years: who would be handed the crown when he leaves Manchester City?

At different points, it had appeared destined to follow the same pattern. Rodolfo Borrell, Domenec Torrent and Juanma Lillo have been the older heads Guardiola leaned on, but his successor would likely come from a hungry younger generation. It was Mikel Arteta and Enzo Maresca who were the ambitious, young interns recruited, groomed and prepared for the big time. And Kompany was the captain seemingly destined for the dugout.

By staying at City far longer than anyone could have expected — nine years and 558 games is more than double Guardiola’s time in charge of Barca’s senior team or Bayern Munich — each of those potential inheritors ended up leaving: Arteta to Arsenal in 2019, Kompany to Burnley in 2022, and Maresca to Leicester City in 2023.

But it seems the wait might almost be over. This could be Guardiola’s final season as City coach and, should that be the case, the favoured successor may well be Maresca, who spent the 2022-23 season on the City coaching staff.

When Arteta and Kompany were at the club, both were spoken about internally at City as being capable of taking over one day. Like Guardiola, they had a ferocious obsession with the game and a forensic attention to detail, traits that saw them constantly learning about all aspects of running a modern football club, including some areas which Guardiola had been less keen on, such as specialist coaches and data analysis.

Arteta would have represented the ultimate continuity option, given he worked under Guardiola for three and a half years. He has been reacting to and challenging City’s way of playing for almost six years now at the Emirates and understands the demands of the league and the calendar. But the more time has passed, the further he has moved from the original Guardiola recipe.

His Arsenal team are defined more by its solid defensive base than its attacking flair. The other challenge is the amount of water that has passed under the bridge. Arteta has forged a deep connection to Arsenal and, given the intense rivalry between the two clubs over the past three years, it would be an incendiary move.

Kompany, the other obvious candidate, has never actually coached under Guardiola, nor at City. He is a club legend with a statue outside the ground, the emblem of the club’s rise to supremacy in the modern era, but he is at Bayern Munich developing a team that looks capable of challenging those at the summit of European football. To swap that trajectory for the pressure of living up to his old boss would be a gamble — and would require Bayern to play ball.

Maresca, who twice joined City only to leave after just a year — to Parma in 2021 and then to Leicester in 2023 — may be a more feasible target.

Of all the teams out there, the style of play Maresca has embedded at Chelsea over the past 18 months comes closest to mirroring that of Guardiola, at least in its fundamentals. The slow build-up, the deliberate patterns, the pressing. The chess thinker who concedes he sees the game through his old mentor’s eyes.

“If everyone starts moving wherever they want, it’s not freedom, it’s chaos,” he told Sky Sports last year on his style of play. “The positional idea gives players a better picture, better space, and better solutions.” Straight out of the Guardiola manual.

Guardiola will naturally have an opinion on who should be entrusted to carry on his legacy. It only takes a look at the frequent changes of coach and direction at Manchester United following the end of Sir Alex Ferguson’s 27-year reign — a longevity the Spaniard admires — to see why a devout acolyte in Maresca is appealing.

The City manager surely looks upon the last 12 years of decline at Old Trafford and the rudderless years that followed Arsene Wenger’s eventual departure from the Emirates and sees potential tragedy — the loss of an idea, the failure to seize the spoils of war.

Ferguson had left behind a title-winning team that, although weak, was a final reminder of his powers. You can see similarities in the position Guardiola finds himself in, having rebuilt his squad over the past year after the loss of so many key components of his era-defining team.

One club source, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they did not have permission to comment publicly, believes that if City win the Premier League this season, it will only solidify the expectation that Guardiola is leaving, as it would arguably constitute the most impressive title of them all, given the rebuild and scale of competition.

Unprompted, Guardiola praised Maresca in a press conference last month. “One of the best managers in the world, ” he said. “I know him quite well, but the job he has done at Chelsea does not get enough credit. Winning the Club World Cup and Conference League, qualifying for the Champions League in a league that is so tough, with a young team. It is exceptional.”

It takes more than just being a great imitator to win promotion from the Championship with Leicester City and then to find success where others have struggled in recent years at Chelsea. At Stamford Bridge, he has been tasked with taking a uniquely assembled squad of young players and forging a collective style. He has won two trophies and, given the freshness of this City team, it is a positive indicator of his ability to develop individuals while getting results.

Maresca also spent a year in charge of City’s ‘elite development squad’ (EDS, their under-21 team), where he won Premier League 2 while coaching Cole Palmer, Nico O’Reilly and Oscar Bobb. He is familiar with the club hub adjacent to the Etihad, which serves as the first-team training base and the academy stadium — and which has proven to be ahead of its time.

There has been a sense that Maresca is not always aligned with those above him at Chelsea. City Football Group, which owns Manchester City, is a network he understands, as a food chain and as a winning machine.

This is where the value of continuity is up for debate, however. Only eight players remain from the treble-winning squad Maresca assisted — Stefan Ortega, John Stones, Bernardo Silva, Nathan Ake, Ruben Dias, Rico Lewis, Phil Foden and Erling Haaland — and the first three are out of contract in the summer. Maresca’s Chelsea play a similar way to the City of old, but Guardiola’s team have moved to a quicker, more direct style this season.

Do City need a close cousin of Guardiola or a clean break? It was always assumed that the ex-Barcelona trio of Guardiola, former sporting director Txiki Begiristain, and chief executive Ferran Soriano would opt for a replacement from the Barcelona school. The dynasty would carry on in the hands of one of their own.

Begiristain’s exit in September felt ominous for Guardiola’s future. The power triangle had been broken and, no matter how well his replacement, Hugo Viana, has slotted in, no one could replicate the shared journey Guardiola and Begiristain have been on over the past 17 years.

Guardiola has always, in the end, found another reason to keep going. The perfect off-ramp has never arrived. If this is to be Guardiola’s 10th and final year, will he announce it mid-season, like Jurgen Klopp, or will he fear it damages their chances? Or will he want to give himself the leeway to change his mind again?