Enzo Maresca has been Manchester City manager for three months. On 29 September an independent Premier League commission handed the club he took over from Pep Guardiola a guilty verdict on 114 of 115 charges of serious financial breaches between 2009-10 and 2017-18. Maresca himself has said nothing directly about it.
What he did post, in the hours after the ruling broke, was a Socrates quote on Instagram: “The only thing I know is that I know nothing.” Underneath came three short sentences of his own.
“Time to breathe. Time to analyse. Time to learn.”
When his representatives were asked for a comment on the verdict, the reply was a screenshot of that same post. Nothing more.
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What the commission ruled
The commission found that City used “sham” contracts with commercial partners to inflate revenues and understate costs by more than £900m across the period covered. The central mechanism was more than £830m paid by City’s owner Abu Dhabi United Group and booked as sponsorship revenue from Abu Dhabi companies rather than as owner funding.
Every financial charge was upheld, along with every charge of non-cooperation with the investigation bar one. City call the ruling “unsafe” and say it “contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact”.
The club must lodge its appeal by Friday, 2 October. Any appeal triggers a fresh three-person commission. Sanctions have not been set, and the range runs from points deductions and fines to expulsion from the Premier League.
From Guardiola’s assistant to his successor
Maresca signed a three-year contract announced on 29 June, replacing Guardiola after leaving Chelsea on New Year’s Day. He has previously worked at the club in two coaching roles: head of the Elite Development Squad in 2020-21, and one of Guardiola’s first-team assistants across the 2022-23 treble campaign. Both spells fall outside the commission’s window of 2009-10 to 2017-18.
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On the pitch the start has gone as well as it could. City are top of the Premier League after five wins from five to open the season, and Maresca has been nominated for September’s Manager of the Month. The sanctions hearing has yet to be scheduled.
