There was a particularly distinguished passenger on a distinctly unglamorous airline. Rodri was on the Ryanair flight to Liverpool and part of the surprise for some was that, via Merseyside, he was returning to Manchester at all. The subject of bids from Barcelona, Rodri’s future may lie in his native Spain rather than at Manchester City.
It is so far unknown if he incurred Ryanair’s infamous fines for bringing the World Cup’s Golden Ball in hand luggage or whether he stowed it under a seat. Enzo Maresca saw the man who lifted the most prestigious trophy of all briefly and gave him a big hug, he said. They would talk later. City’s new manager coached Rodri when his goal clinched the Champions League and thus the treble in 2023. Whether he will ever manage him remains to be seen; minor back surgery would always have ruled Rodri out of Sunday’s Community Shield against Arsenal.
But with Barcelona expected to return with a third offer, Maresca may have to contemplate forging an entirely new midfield. His inheritance from Pep Guardiolawas an enviable one in many respects, but if he is the continuity candidate there will be change at the centre of the pitch. Rodri has a year left on his deal but seems to have decided to go. Bernardo Silva left when his contract expired; Guardiola’s own departure made it a still more natural end point for one of his closest allies. Tijjani Reijnders is heading for the exit, too, off to Al Qadsiah for £51m, and if the Dutchman lost his place as Guardiola preferred an axis of Rodri and Silva, it was nevertheless the case that only six players made more appearances for City last season.
Guardiola famously said that, if he could pick 11 midfielders, he would. There were times when he had a surfeit of options: in 2019-20, for instance, he had not merely Rodri and Bernardo Silva but also David Silva, Ilkay Gundogan, Kevin De Bruyne and Fernandinho.
Now Maresca only has one who seems guaranteed a central role this season, in Elliot Anderson. The 23-year-old is a very expensive midfielder – at £116m, the costliest ever – and arrives fresh from excelling in a World Cup, but he is only one man nevertheless. City have deluxe targets but this is a time of transition, of instability and uncertainty.
“We are in a moment when players that were here for many years probably already left and probably they can leave and that means there is a change,” reflected Maresca.
Anderson is designed to be the future. He comes with his own attributes but Silva’s influence was such that perhaps he is irreplaceable in some respects: the small man who was the big-game player, the specialist in small spaces, to borrow one of Guardiola’s phrases, a tactically intelligent technician.
“It is big challenge first of all because Bernardo shows how good he is, on the ball and off the ball in these years but Elliot arrives,” said Maresca. “We are completely sure Elliot is doing a great job for this club in the next one, two, three, four, five years; no doubt about that. They are different players but we are going to try and use Elliot in the best way for him and for the team.”
Quite how that is will depend in part on whether Rodri stays. Officially the best player in the World Cup, a recent Ballon d’Or winner, he can be called the game’s outstanding defensive midfielder now.
Neither of City’s two premier targets is a Rodri duplicate; perhaps it is impossible to find one. Enzo Fernandez tended to play for Maresca’s Chelsea alongside more of a destructive midfielder, in Moises Caicedo, and spent some of last season operating as a No 10. Ayyoub Bouaddi does not have Rodri’s experience, authority or power, unsurprisingly given the Moroccan is still a teenager. Being paired with either could give Anderson more defensive duties.
Then there is the question that, should Rodri go, of if City make one or two midfield signings. “Can be one or two,” said Maresca, and if he was talking more generally, that may just mean in the midfield. Mateo Kovacic has said he is staying; Nico Gonzalez has voiced similar sentiments, though that may change if there were two more arrivals.
Get both Fernandez and Bouaddi and City’s bill for the midfield refit could be around £300m, albeit offset by the sales of Reijnders and, therefore, Rodri. Maresca indicated that City would not be forced into action by Chelsea’s artificial deadline of 5pm on 14 August to bid for Fernandez.
There are a lot of moving parts. Some of the decisions are not Maresca’s, as his explanation about Reijnders indicated. “It’s a bit difficult to convince players when they are already convinced,” he said. “You need to change their thoughts. That is not always easy.”
The sense is that Rodri’s mind was already made up, too. It leaves Maresca to create his midfield; with Anderson, perhaps augmented by Rodri or Bouaddi or Fernandez or Kovacic. “In the moment the window transfer closes we need to be good enough to find as soon as possible solutions for our players for the team,” he said. And his reign starts in earnest, it is still unclear who those solutions will be.