Why Manchester City Are Going All-In on Dribblers Under Enzo Maresca

Manchester City’s growing obsession with dribblers is no accident. The club have increasingly assembled an attack built around players capable of carrying the ball, beating defenders and creating chaos, with Iliman Ndiaye appearing to be the latest addition to that strategy.

For years, City were viewed as the ultimate expression of Pep Guardiola’s positional football, with some arguing that the system left little room for individual freedom. That perception was challenged when City signed Jérémy Doku from Rennes in 2023. The Belgian was a high-volume dribbler whose biggest strength was taking on defenders, but questions remained over his end product and whether his style would fit Guardiola’s possession-heavy approach.

Doku has since answered those questions. He has developed into one of the Premier League’s most dangerous one-v-one wingers, with the 2025-26 season suggesting that his influence was continuing to grow. Rather than suppressing his individual qualities, City have increasingly found ways to make them work within their structure.

The arrival of Rayan Cherki last season pushed that trend even further. The Frenchman is arguably an even more unpredictable attacking player than Doku and enjoyed an impressive debut campaign in England. Antoine Semenyo was another regular dribbler brought in, arriving from Bournemouth in January, while City now appear ready to add Ndiaye from Everton in a reported £65 million deal.

If the Ndiaye transfer is completed, City would have the Premier League’s top three players for dribble attempts from last season: Doku with 162, Semenyo with 144 and Ndiaye with 136. They would also have four of the league’s top eight players for completed dribbles, with Doku recording 84, Ndiaye 65, Semenyo 59 and Cherki 51. Elliot Anderson, another summer arrival, was only one successful dribble behind Cherki despite playing almost twice as many minutes.

That concentration of ball carriers is difficult to dismiss as coincidence. Guardiola may have left the club and been replaced by Enzo Maresca, but City’s recruitment suggests the broader thinking has remained intact. The club appear determined to add another dimension to a possession game that opponents have become increasingly comfortable defending.

Guardiola himself once suggested that the future of football could move away from his possession-dominant model towards more transitional styles. City’s collection of dribblers gives them the tools to become more unpredictable in those moments, while still retaining the passing principles that have defined their success.

The need for that unpredictability is particularly clear against deep defensive blocks. City spent 23.4 per cent of their build-up time last season facing a low block, the third-highest proportion in the Premier League. Against that kind of resistance, another sequence of five or 10 passes is not always enough. A player capable of beating his man with a sudden change of direction can open a defence in seconds.

Ndiaye would therefore represent more than another attacking signing. His arrival would continue City’s attempt to diversify their threat without completely abandoning Guardiola’s possession-based foundations. The objective is not to replace control with chaos, but to introduce enough chaos to make that control harder to defend.

There is also an interesting twist to the Guardiola narrative. When the Spaniard first arrived at City, he reportedly instructed the club’s recruitment team to find him players who could dribble. His title-winning sides were hardly short of players willing to take on opponents, either.

City ranked among the Premier League’s top six for dribble attempts in four of their title-winning seasons: 2017-18, 2018-19, 2020-21 and 2021-22. There has otherwise been little direct correlation between dribbling volume and winning the league, but the numbers underline that ball-carrying has never been incompatible with Guardiola’s football.

What has changed is the concentration of those players. If Ndiaye joins Doku, Cherki and Semenyo, City will possess one of the Premier League’s deepest collections of high-level dribblers. For a team facing increasingly compact defensive structures, that may be less about abandoning the old City model and more about finding new ways to make it dangerous.