{"id":279298,"date":"2026-09-04T23:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T23:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/279298\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T23:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T23:12:11","slug":"enzo-maresca-says-enzo-fernandezs-arrival-lifted-manchester-city-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/279298\/","title":{"rendered":"Enzo Maresca says Enzo Fernandez\u2019s arrival lifted Manchester City players"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fernandez signed for City from Chelsea for a British record-equalling \u00a3125million late on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

The deal ended a long-running saga with City having been linked with the World Cup winner for most of the summer and Maresca believes his experience can only make the dressing room stronger.<\/p>\n

Enzo Maresca has said that Enzo Fernandez is a ‘winner’ after he joined Manchester City this week for a British record equalling fee of \u00a3125m. The Man City manager was speaking ahead of his side’s match against Coventry in the Premier League.<\/p>\n

The City manager said: \u201cHe\u2019s a winner and when you belong to a squad and another winner arrives they are always happy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can promise you that in the last four or five days four or five players in the squad were asking if he was coming or not because they wanted him to be with us.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you want to compete or win, it\u2019s much more important to have players that already know how to do that than players who never have done it in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnzo is not the only one. This squad has many players who know how to win titles and know how to compete, and this is what we were looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fernandez could go straight into the City side to face Coventry at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday, although he will not be wearing the captain\u2019s armband.<\/p>\n

\"EnzoEnzo Fernandez has joined Manchester City from Chelsea (John Walton\/PA)<\/p>\n

Maresca said last week he wanted to sign \u201cone or two more captains\u201d but, even though Fernandez was his leader when Chelsea boss, he has not specifically earmarked him for that role at his new club.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe four captains are Ruben (Dias), Erling (Haaland), Marc Guehi and Gigi Donnarumma,\u201d said Maresca.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Enzo is ready. I know him quite well, I know what he can bring to the team. He\u2019s a winner, he has a winner\u2019s mentality. He knows how to win \u2013 World Cup, Club World Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fernandez\u2019s arrival was accompanied by that of winger Iliman Ndiaye from Everton, completing a summer rebuild of the squad that has cost close to \u00a3430m.<\/p>\n

\"IlimanIliman Ndiaye also switched to Etihad Stadium (Peter Tarry\/PA)<\/p>\n

Maresca said: \u201cI\u2019m very, very happy for the effort from the ownership, very happy in the last days.<\/p>\n

\u201cIliman and Enzo arrived and now the squad is complete, it\u2019s finished. Now it\u2019s time to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Omar Marmoush among a number of players to have left, there is now no obvious centre forward cover in the squad for the prolific Erling Haaland, should it be needed.<\/p>\n

Maresca, however, is confident that he has enough versatility in his ranks for others to be able to deputise, with forward Antoine Semenyo the most likely stand-in.<\/p>\n

\"AntoineMaresca has earmarked Antoine Semenyo as Erling Haaland\u2019s stand-in (Nick Potts\/PA)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have different options,\u201d said the Italian. \u201cAntoine can be there. It depends on the gameplan but we can have different players for that position.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve liked since day one we can use players in different positions. It\u2019s like having more players.<\/p>\n

\u201cNico (O\u2019Reilly) can be full-back or attacking midfielder. It\u2019s like having two or three players but in the end they are one player. It is good to be versatile.\u201d<\/p>\n

Winger Jeremy Doku remains on the sidelines this week with a calf injury but Matheus Nunes is fit again and back in contention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fernandez signed for City from Chelsea for a British record-equalling \u00a3125million late on Tuesday night. The deal ended…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-279298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}