Manchester City rounded off their pre-season tour of Asia with a 3-1 victory over Atletico Madrid in Seoul, South Korea.
They trailed at half-time after Jorge Dominguez capitalised on some sloppy defending from a corner but Omar Marmoush converted two Antoine Semenyo crosses in quick succession after the break and Rayan Ait-Nouri added another at the death.
The Atletico players were furious with Marmoush’s second as the big-screen replays showed that Semenyo was well offside, and there was a whiff of suspicion about Ait-Nouri’s goal too.
After making sweeping changes in the previous two matches, Enzo Maresca only made one substitution at half-time as his preparations ramp up for the new season, giving us some idea of how he wants things to look in next weekend’s Community Shield and beyond.
The rest of City’s World Cup players — Erling Haaland, Rayan Cherki, Jeremy Doku and the England representatives — will report back for training on Wednesday ahead of an open training session on Thursday, which will give us more clues ahead of the big kick-off in a fortnight’s time.
Sam Lee breaks down the main talking points from City’s final tour victory.
Which flank will Semenyo settle on?
The Ghana winger probably comes away from this tour as the biggest standout, having shown his quality in all three matches, even in the sapping conditions against K-League All Stars on Wednesday.
He was electric in the first half of the first match against Inter last Saturday and he was especially good in the second half against Atletico here. He was brilliant for City’s first goal, sliding to retrieve a pass that was played behind him before springing up immediately and bursting away from his man to put in a low cross that Marmoush did well to get on the end of.
A few moments later, it was a similar story, with Semenyo getting in behind on the left to cross for Marmoush to score — it was slightly less impressive, though, given he was miles offside only for the linesman to miss it.
Semenyo has talked about his excitement at playing for Maresca due to how the Italian wants direct dribbling from his wingers and that should encourage City fans ahead of the new season, too.
One small doubt concerns where Semenyo will play because he has been at his best on the left wing but that is most likely where Jeremy Doku will come in after he returns to training next week. If Maresca were to play Semenyo on the left and Doku on the right, that would certainly add a fresh dynamic to the City attack, but there should be some electric wing play no matter the combination.
Savinho seems suited to City’s new style
It remains to be seen whether Savinho will still be at City next season, given the long-standing interest in his services from Tottenham, but in the meantime, he has been another winger who is seemingly benefiting from Maresca’s up-and-at-’em approach out wide.
In the first half against Atletico, he repeatedly ran at the Spanish side’s defence and although his first chops inside often ended up with him being unable to shift his balance enough to get on the ball cleanly, he had great success when driving to the byline, where he could put the ball across the face of goal.
Savinho impressed against Atletico (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)
Marmoush got his two goals in those areas after the break but before half-time, there was nobody in the area to captalise. That scenario presents another cause for optimism ahead of the new season: imagine how many goals Haaland will get if City continue to put crosses into dangerous areas from both sides.
Maresca has made his mark – expect a major tone shift
It is obvious from both speaking to the players and watching both training sessions and matches that City’s build-up play is a lot more straightforward than it was under Pep Guardiola.
Under the previous manager, City would constantly change how they were going to play out from the back from game to game, and give huge responsibility to players like Bernardo Silva and Rodri to hold onto the ball and find solutions whenever they opened up.
Under Maresca, City have been working on certain rehearsed patterns to help them get the ball out from the goalkeeper into midfield. The coaching staff have not tried to conceal any tactical plans from the media or opposition at the two open training sessions, so it has been clear to see the moves that they have been working on on the training ground in matches.
The basic idea seems to be to get the ball to a free man quickly and advance up the pitch as directly as possible with passes through the lines when they present themselves.
Combined with the wingers’ instructions to dribble at speed, it does suggest that City are going to be fun to watch. One drawback could be that they will be more predictable to play against, even allowing for different patterns to be introduced during the season.
Overall, City are likely to be less polished than they were under Guardiola, partly due to the tactical instructions but also because the players that have been recruited over the past couple of years are more suited to a direct style. If there is less control of matches, then individual quality will have to make the difference — they do have plenty of that but the flow of City games could look very different to what are used to.
