Ruben Dias was handed the Manchester City armband by a manager who had been in the job for barely six weeks, in a dressing room that had just lost a Ballon d’Or winner, a former captain and a decade-long servant in the space of one transfer window. Four wins later, the new captain says the rebuild is already taking.
“So many people have left and so many winners have left, and now new people have joined with a lot of ambition,” Dias said, describing summer arrivals he called “desperate to win”. “I feel like everything is making a lot of sense. Everyone is buying into the idea.”
The idea belongs to Enzo Maresca, appointed on 29 June on a three-year deal to 2029 as Pep Guardiola’s successor. City go to Old Trafford on Sunday at 16:30 BST top of the Premier League with nine points from nine.
A captaincy handed over in the middle of a clear-out
Maresca named a leadership group of four: Dias as captain, with Erling Haaland, Marc Guehi and Gianluigi Donnarumma alongside him. The choice of the Portuguese was the least surprising part of a summer full of upheaval. Dias arrived from Benfica for £65m in 2020, won the league in his first season and has been inside City’s leadership group almost ever since.
What changed around him was substantial. Rodri, the 2024 Ballon d’Or winner, left for Barcelona in a £65m deal. Bernardo Silva, the previous captain, joined Real Madrid on a free transfer. John Stones ended a decade at the club by moving to Inter Milan. Those three between them account for a combined haul of Premier League titles, a Champions League and the institutional memory of how City won them.
Dias, at 29, is now the bridge. “In terms of the role I have, it goes down to trying to be the best version of yourself,” he said. “I am 29, I am going to be 30 next year but I am excited about all of this. Excited is the word.”
A record £458m window, and a rebuilt midfield
City spent £458m across the window — a Premier League record — while recouping more than £300m in sales. The money went overwhelmingly into the middle of the pitch, the area Rodri’s departure hollowed out.
- Enzo Fernandez arrived for a club-record £125m
- Elliot Anderson came from Nottingham Forest for £116m, Maresca’s first signing
- Ayyoub Bouaddi joined as a long-term holding option
- Iliman Ndiaye was added on deadline day
- Geronimo Rulli signed as goalkeeping cover behind Donnarumma
Dias has been explicit that the adjustment is technical as well as cultural. “There’s obviously many things from training session to some details about the way we press,” he said — a nod to a coach whose build-up patterns and pressing triggers differ meaningfully from the ones this squad spent years absorbing under Guardiola.
The first public evidence was ugly. Arsenal beat City 3-0 in the Community Shield at the Principality Stadium on 16 August, Riccardo Calafiori scoring inside 24 seconds before Kai Havertz and Martin Odegaard finished the job. It was the worst possible advertisement for a £458m summer and it framed the questions Maresca has been answering ever since.
Four straight wins, and then the derby
The response has been emphatic in results if not always in performance. City beat Bournemouth 2-1 on 23 August, won 4-1 at Crystal Palace on 28 August with Haaland scoring inside 17 minutes and again late, edged Coventry 1-0 at home on 5 September through a Haaland header — his third goal in three league games — and then won 2-0 at Porto in the Champions League on 8 September.
The Coventry win was the instructive one. A single first-half header against a newly promoted side is not the margin City generated in their pomp, and it hinted at a team still learning where to stand rather than one operating on instinct. Maresca’s City are winning while the pattern is still forming.
Sunday raises the bar considerably. A Manchester derby at Old Trafford is the first fixture of the Maresca era where the atmosphere, not the tactical detail, will be the variable — and the first where a squad missing Rodri, Bernardo and Stones will be asked to manage a hostile ground without them.
That is the point of the armband, and Dias knows it. The signings are desperate to win. The next three months will establish whether desperation and a record transfer outlay are enough to replace a decade of accumulated certainty.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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