Manchester City Faces Uncertainty as Rodri's Future Hangs in the Balance

Manchester City stand at a crossroads.

Ten years of Pep Guardiola have given way to Enzo Maresca, and the shift is anything but gentle. This is not a simple change of name on the office door. It is a reset of a treble-winning machine while the engine is still running.

Four pillars of that 2022-23 side have already gone. Manuel Akanji, Nathan Ake, Bernardo Silva and John Stones – players who defined City’s control, versatility and calm under pressure – have all departed this summer. In their place, the club have pushed £116m towards Elliot Anderson and handed a pathway to 17-year-old Jeremy Monga.

The dressing room looks different. The pitch will too.

The Rodri question

And then there is Rodri.

Fresh from captaining Spain to World Cup glory and collecting the Golden Ball as the tournament’s outstanding player, City’s metronome now heads for back surgery on Monday. He has a year left on his contract. Speculation around his future grows by the week, with reports in Spain suggesting Real Madrid are already planning as if he will join them.

The timescale on his recovery is unclear. The stakes are not.

Maresca did not hesitate when asked for his view in his first news conference.

“I think every manager wants to have Rodri because he is a top player,” he said. “But now, surgery on Monday... he needs a holiday... he needs to rest and recover and then he will be back with us.”

The message is blunt: keep him. Build around him. Wait for him.

Yet the market rarely listens to sentiment. If Madrid push and Rodri hesitates, City face a brutal calculation. Cash in when he returns to fitness and reshape entirely, or hold their nerve and back Maresca’s insistence that the Spaniard remains the centrepiece of his first great project?

Either way, the new manager cannot simply cross his fingers. He needs a plan for both worlds.

Maresca’s board, Maresca’s pieces

To understand how City might look with or without Rodri, you have to start with Maresca’s footballing religion.

He is a disciple of positional play, a coach who sees the pitch like a chessboard. Not as a cliché, but as a working model.

“There are a lot of similarities,” Maresca has said. “The most important is positional play and strategy. For a coach, it's important to have the mentality of a chess player: develop a plan, study counter-moves, choose the arrangement of the pieces.”

His teams typically morph into a 3-2-2-3 structure with the ball. The numbers matter less than the principles: three to build, two to anchor, two between the lines, three to stretch the pitch. It is a shape that demands intelligence more than raw energy, players who can slide between roles without losing their bearings.

This is where Rodri becomes priceless.

During the World Cup, he showed exactly why. Nominally a holding midfielder, he spent long spells dropping into the back line when Aymeric Laporte stepped forward with the ball, then stepping out again to dictate from midfield. When space opened up, he advanced. When Spain needed security, he retreated. He read the game a phase ahead.

In a Maresca side, that ability to glide between those predefined positions is gold.

Life with Rodri, life without him

At their best, Maresca’s teams rotate within that 3-2-2-3 like a well-rehearsed dance. The innovation lies in how he creates the shape.

He has done it before at City. During the treble-winning season, when Maresca worked as Guardiola’s assistant, it was John Stones who famously stepped out from centre-back into midfield alongside Rodri. City defended in a 4-4-2, then attacked in that 3-2-2-3, with Stones transforming into a second pivot.

At Chelsea, Maresca’s tweak was different but the idea the same. Moises Caicedo started at right-back in a nominal back four, then moved inside into one of the holding midfield roles when they attacked. The shirt number stayed the same. The position did not.

Rodri, with his understanding of positioning, tempo and risk, is the ideal anchor for this. Anderson, talented as he is, will need time to learn those subtleties. Any future signing such as Ayyoub Bouaddi, the 18-year-old Lille midfielder City are monitoring after his impressive World Cup with Morocco, would face the same education.

Rodri himself needed years under Fernandinho’s guidance to fully master the demands of City’s midfield. That is the level of nuance Maresca is dealing with.

So what if the worst-case scenario arrives and Rodri goes?

Maresca has already shown a sharp eye for reinvention. Stones into holding midfield. Caicedo into full-back. Marc Cucurella into attacking midfield. He has a habit of spotting roles that players can grow into before they, or anyone else, see it.

If City lose their best piece, he will try to redraw the board.

A bigger squad, a different City

One clear departure from the Guardiola era is already emerging. Maresca wants numbers.

Guardiola liked a tight group, a small squad of elite players he could trust in every position. Maresca, facing a squad in transition and a tactical model that leans heavily on flexibility, appears to want more options, more profiles, more “pieces” to place on his board.

Anderson is one. Monga is another. Bouaddi, if he arrives, would add a different texture again. None of them is Rodri. That is the point. Maresca’s challenge is to assemble enough complementary parts that the system survives even if the crown jewel is removed.

City will be better with Rodri. That much is obvious. With him, Maresca starts his tenure with one of the best players in world football controlling the most important area of the pitch.

Without him, the new manager is forced to accelerate his reshaping of a squad already stripped of Akanji, Ake, Bernardo and Stones. The rebuild stops being gradual and becomes immediate, high-risk, unforgiving.

This is the gamble at the heart of City’s summer. Do they cling to the old axis for one more cycle, or let Maresca fully redraw the lines now?

The next move belongs to Rodri – and on Maresca’s chessboard, that single decision could dictate the entire season.