Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca is missing seven of his best players but could discover a new first team star
Enzo Maresca poses as Manchester City manager(Image: PA Wire)
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It's fair to say the World Cup could have been kinder to Manchester City and Enzo Maresca. No team sent more players to the summer tournament and a good chunk of those went a decent way - enough to rule them out of the next fortnight in Asia.
If you were picking your strongest XI for the biggest game of the coming season, right now you would arguably put all of Erling Haaland, Jeremy Doku, Rayan Cherki, Elliot Anderson, Rodri, Nico O'Reilly and Marc Guehi in. They are seven players that would likely get in any Premier League team, yet Maresca will not see any of them even in training until after City land back in Manchester.
The next fortnight is not going to show the best of how the Blues will look in their post-Pep Guardiola era, yet it could still still produce another first team star. All Maresca has to do is to follow Guardiola's lead and find the gems.
That was the task set for the Catalan in 2016 by City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak. As much as the hierarchy wanted success, they wanted Guardiola to bring through academy players and turn the £200m training complex that had recently opened into a production line for their own first team as well as a money-making talent factory.
Guardiola used pre-season tours to blood youngsters that had been recommended to him and there were several extremely fruitful summers. Phil Foden, Rico Lewis and O'Reilly all used this time to announce themselves to the manager, while there is still a sense of what might have been at the leg break Oscar Bobb suffered after his pre-season in 2024.
City's academy has not slowed down in recent years, continuing their prolific way of hoovering up trophies and developing talent in the last two seasons even as the first team fell short in their main goals. A number of the best talents are on the plane with Maresca to Asia set to touch down on Wednesday afternoon, and while most will not manage to go straight into the first team squad for this season the opportunities are there.
It is up to those young players to take those chances, and for Maresca to find the gems that can shine for him at some point in the future.