Man City’s £125m Enzo Fernandez Move Explained: Why Enzo Maresca Saw Him as Rodri’s Only Replacement

After a pursuit that stretched across months, Enzo Maresca has finally landed the player he wanted most. Enzo Fernandez is heading to the Etihad Stadium, with Manchester City prepared to pay £125million to get the deal done.

The transfer arrives against a backdrop of strained relations between City and Chelsea, the club Fernandez joined in 2023 for £107million.

Maresca’s own exit from Stamford Bridge did little to ease the tension. He resigned as Chelsea manager in January with his sights fixed on succeeding Pep Guardiola at City, and when compensation was finally agreed in June, Chelsea issued a pointed statement that did not even refer to him by name.

Fernandez brings obvious talent, but also a combustible edge. He is the player who was sent off in a World Cup final, who tried to get Chelsea team-mate Marc Cucurella dismissed while playing for Argentina in the same match, and who collected regular bookings for dissent last season. He also cupped his ears towards England supporters after scoring an equaliser in the World Cup semi-final, and, most seriously, was accused of racism by club colleagues after live-streaming himself and Argentina team-mates singing chants following their Copa America triumph two years ago.

For Maresca, however, the appeal is clear: he is signing a midfielder he trusts implicitly. If the Italian is to make his City tenure work, he will need players who buy into him completely. That faith was evident even after the racism controversy in 2024, when Maresca still chose Fernandez to wear the captain’s armband for Chelsea’s Premier League opener against City.

Maresca joked recently that Erling Haaland could not possibly be his captain at City because he demands that his skipper race over to him after every goal to receive fresh instructions, unless it was the captain who scored it. Haaland would clearly score too many. At Chelsea, though, even when club captain Reece James was on the pitch, Maresca would often still call Fernandez over once they scored.

Fernandez was so often Chelsea’s engine room. Last season, albeit one Maresca left halfway through, the club ranked rock bottom for how far their players ran in the Premier League yet Fernandez sat inside the top 10 for distance covered individually.

Across Maresca’s 18 months at the club, no one played more league matches for Chelsea than Fernandez and only Mo Salah and Bruno Fernandes created more chances from open play across the division.

Maresca is taking on arguably the most daunting succession in world football without the most influential midfielder in City’s recent history, Rodri. 

Without the most reliable metronome in world football, Maresca is going to have to find another way to make City’s midfield tick.

Fernandez certainly isn’t a like-for-like replacement. Both are hugely authoritative and dominant but in different ways. Like Rodri, Fernandez is always at the heart of his team’s attacking play but more frequently at the business end of it.

In his full season under Maresca in 2024-25, he played a part in 200 attacking moves that ended in a Chelsea shot, either taking it himself, creating the chance, or being a part of the build-up. Nearly 60 per cent of them were him having the shot or setting it up. Among midfielders last season, too, he ranked first for expected goals.

By contrast, Rodri’s influence in the previous 2023-24 campaign, the one before he suffered his serious injury, was such that while he topped the list for involvements in his side’s attacking play, only 37 per cent of them were shots or chances he created.

That season, Rodri averaged more than twice as many passes as Fernandez in 2024-25 and at a far higher completion rate with more than three times as many splitting opposition defensive lines.

The Chelsea man, however, was much more direct when he got the ball, playing a higher percentage of his passes forward than Rodri and more of them into the box. Unsurprisingly, Fernandez commits more fouls.

As one colleague who watches Fernandez often put it: ‘Rodri is like the dishwasher, keeps everything nice and clean. Enzo then smashes those dishes.’

One of the biggest differences, and one that Maresca will hope to make the most of, is Fernandez’s superb knack of crashing into the box. Rodri averages less than half a run into the penalty area per game. Fernandez usually makes at least five, and they frequently end up with him scoring.

Like another Chelsea star who made the move to City, he’s Lampard-esque in his ability to find the net following his late runs into the box.

See these examples below, beginning with a trip to Burnley in November, when he bursts forward late as team-mate Marc Guiu charges into the box.

When Rodri was fit and at his peak, Guardiola prefered to use him as a single midfield pivot able to give others like Bernardo Silva the freedom to roam forward, safe in the knowledge that Rodri was there to clean up any mess. When he wasn’t fit, Guardiola would often switch to a two-man midfield.

Maresca did the same in pre-season with Mateo Kovacic and Tijjani Reijnders there against Atletico Madrid in South Korea. The former sitting, the latter primed to burst forward. 

In terms of style, Fernandez is much more similar to Reijnders, who departed for Saudi side Al Qadsiah a fortnight ago. If you compare their heat maps (below), they are both at their most content getting on the ball in the channels.

Rodri proved at the World Cup that he still has what it takes to be the best player on the biggest stage, but so much of the tournament was played at a slower pace due to the heat and altitude in the United States, Canada and Mexico. That allowed him to thrive.

The Premier League is a less forgiving landscape with monsters more effective these days than metronomes.

Between Fernandez, Elliot Anderson and Ayyoub Bouaddi, Maresca seems to have found his way to replace him. It’s just cost City more than £300million to do it.