Come August, Enzo Maresca will only need to tilt his head slightly to the left to see the legacy which hangs over him.The naming of the Etihad Stadium’s expanded North Stand after Pep Guardiola is a monument that feels appropriate for a man who has delivered over half the major trophies in Manchester City’s 146-year history. A statue, too, will follow.At the same time, it is a simple task for any match photographer, squatting low and pointing his lens skyward, to silhouette Maresca, a scoreline against City’s favour, and the name of the predecessor that once more delivered the world to this post-industrial corner of East Manchester.“The players don’t know it, but I will be there controlling them,” Guardiola said on the pitch post-match. A joke, of course, but a reality for Maresca that is inescapable. One man’s tribute is another’s weight.Maresca and Guardiola before a pre-season match between Chelsea and Manchester City (Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)Ahead of Guardiola’s final game against Aston Villa, on a day where the weather would melt tarmac, the towpaths, roads and plazas are filled with men selling scarves and children wearing them, blue, fluffy, and bearing their manager’s face in black and white. “Thank you Pep. Ten glorious years. Twenty Trophies.”There are more, official, tributes too. In the stadium, five huge banners cover the East Stand — one each of departing pair John Stones and Bernardo Silva, and a central triptych of Guardiola pointing back to the fans. “Game Changer. History Maker. City Forever.”“They are not long, these days of wine and roses,” wrote British poet Ernest Dowson, famously. “Out of a misty dream, our path emerges for a while, then closes, within a dream.”Dowson devoted his life to decadence, a literary movement promoting artificiality and excess. The blinding rotations and ornate attacking patterns of Guardiola’s football? Another option, and a reminder; all the power and wealth of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mansour, and Khaldoon Al-Mubarak, that has delivered City such success, could not persuade Guardiola to stay yet longer. As the undoubted end of something approaches at Manchester City, the poet’s words feel prophetic.City entered the pitch to sprinklers casting a vapour of rainbows at their backs. They wore next season’s kit, sky blue bleeding into white, a transitional look for a transitional squad, emerging, blinking, from that dream.Antoine Semenyo celebrates putting City ahead in the defeat to Villa (Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)The eventual result — a 2-1 defeat against an understrength Villa team still recovering from their post-Europa League celebrations — underscores the task at Maresca’s door, albeit a scoreline generated by an afternoon higher on emotion than effort.It felt cruel that Phil Foden’s apparent late equaliser was ruled out by an almost inscrutable VAR offside call; a player for whom Guardiola is the only club manager he has ever known, manufactured in the Catalan’s style, who made his debut just a year into Guardiola’s time in Manchester. It was not to be. Season over, a second successive second place. Over to Maresca.