Manchester City forward, Antoine Semenyo, has hailed new manager Enzo Maresca’s style of play as “music to my ears” after showcasing early signs of his role under the Italian.
City were defeated on penalties by Inter Milan in Maresca’s first game in charge in Hong Kong, but the side demonstrated the attacking intent the new boss will deploy after replacing Pep Guardiola.
Semenyo played the opening 45 minutes and gave Inter full-back Andy Diouf a torrid time with his pace and direct running, helping to set up Divin Mubama’s goal for City.
Substitute Ryan McAidoo also impressed and Maresca said afterwards they are the “kind of wingers I love” ones that are “very aggressive” and take on their man in “one-v-one” situations”.
Semenyo said: “When he got appointed, that was the first thing I thought about because when you’ve played Chelsea previously when he was there, his wide men were always high and quite free.
“So that was one of the things that excited me the most when he got appointed and it’s exciting for me as a winger. I get to have one-v-one situations most of the game and I am looking forward to it.
“I have had individual meetings with him on how he wants to set up, how he wants to play his wide men and just overall as a team.
“I think his ideas are great, quite similar to Pep, but if you watched the Inter game, you would have seen a couple of his ideas play out and it was good. Enzo is just [stay] out wide and when you get the ball, just create opportunities. So it is music to my ears.”
Semenyo joined City from Bournemouth for £65m in the January transfer window, with Guardiola fighting off competition from rivals Manchester United, Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea for his signature.
The player says interest first came in early December with “a lot of talks” taking place, before he made the decision the following month that he wanted to join City.
“I owe them everything to be honest,” Semenyo said of former club Bournemouth. “They helped my Premier League career flourish and obviously the management, the staff behind the scenes, they were all amazing, they made everything so smooth.”
Semenyo scored a total of 21 goals for club and country last season, netting the winning goal in the FA Cup final win over Chelsea which he called a “dream come true”, as well as lifting the Carabao Cup.
Speaking at Ahmad Tea’s Preparation is Everything event in Hong Kong, he added: “I think for me, I just wanted the next step to be the big one and Manchester City was the option. Pep spoke to me beforehand and he said, ‘look, when you come, I am going to make you a better player’.
“You want to get better, you want to improve every season and he definitely helped me with that in the first five months, but obviously sad for him to leave.”-BBC
CAPTION
Antoine Semenyo scored 21 goals across all competitions for club and country last season
