Manchester City will take a surprisingly strong squad to Hong Kong and South Korea for their pre-season preparations as the Enzo Maresca era kicks into gear.After facing the media on Friday, Maresca should be able to get a close look at the majority of his squad when they depart for Hong Kong on Tuesday. Despite sending more players to the World Cup than any other club, the only ones missing from their tour are expected to be those from England, Norway, Spain and France.While that includes big names Rodri, Erling Haaland, Rayan Cherki and new signing Elliot Anderson, it does mean that Maresca will be able to work with many of the players who were mainstays in the team last season, with Ruben Dias, Josko Gvardiol and Antoine Semenyo believed to be taking part.Away from the tour, City director of football Hugo Viana is expected to be busy, with several issues to be resolved before the club’s Premier League campaign begins at home to Bournemouth on August 23.The most pressing issue at the moment regards Rodri, who is subject of interest from Real Madrid and is keen to move to the Santiago Bernabeu. City have always been hopeful of getting him to sign a new contract but have also been aware of the possibility that he could leave, and have been targeting midfielders with that in mind.That situation is likely to play out between offices in Madrid and Manchester while Maresca and the squad are on the other side of the world. City are still targeting a right-back and a winger, further midfield reinforcements and strengthening any positions weakened by outgoings.Manchester City fans will have to wait to see Elliot Anderson play for the club for the first time (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)City play Inter in Hong Kong on Saturday, August 1, before flying to Seoul for games against the K-League All Stars and Atletico Madrid on August 5 and 9.There was an expectation that City’s squad would be severely depleted considering the amount of players at the World Cup but only those who made it to the quarter-finals or beyond will miss out completely. City’s World Cup was a mixed bag in terms of individual performances, but the club will surely benefit from the fact that many players were knocked out relatively early, or indeed not called up at all.Gianluigi Donnarumma, Phil Foden, Nico Gonzalez, Marcus Bettinelli, Rico Lewis and Savinho were always going to be available, having missed out on the tournament, but they should be joined for at least some of the tour, if not all of it, by Gvardiol, Dias, Semenyo, Abdukodir Khusanov, Matheus Nunes, Tijjani Reijnders, Omar Marmoush and Rayan Ait-Nouri.Kalvin Phillips will also be part of the tour after falling out of favour in recent years, while a late call will be made on Jack Grealish as he is still not close to full fitness after foot surgery in February.There will be huge interest in Foden over the summer and into next season, as the 26-year-old aims to get back to the highs of the 2023-24 season, when he fired City to the title and was named PFA Player of the Year. He and Maresca got on well during the Italian’s time as Pep Guardiola’s assistant in the 2022-23 season, and Maresca spoke to Foden after he was left out of the England squad for the World Cup.“I just want to help Phil be the Phil that we all know, but especially the Phil that we all want,” Maresca said on Friday. “First of all for him, because he needs to enjoy football and in general, secondly, because I know how good Phil is, and with Phil in good shape, good mood, we can win games.“I told him it’s my duty to try to help him and to have him back in the way that we all want. He’s from the house, he’s from here, so I think it’s a nice feeling for me to try to help Phil, but also I think Phil is a fan of the club, so it’s nice for him to be back.”Maresca smiled broadly when asked about Grealish at his City unveiling and some have taken his comments as something of an olive branch, after falling out of favour at the Etihad Stadium. Sources say that Maresca is also keen for Grealish to be part of the tour, which suggests the door may be open to a return to the first team next season, although what he actually said about the winger was less convincing.“At the moment, he’s here,” the Italian said. “He’s a Man City player. I always say the same in any club I’ve joined: if there are players that belong to the club, it’s my duty to try to coach them.“Jack, at the moment, is here, I’ve had a good relation with Jack since I left. We’ve kept in touch and the reason why is because he has a big heart, and he’s a very good guy. And we’ll see what happens.”Phillips faces a monumental task to get back into the City team, having struggled in loan spells at West Ham United, Ipswich Town and Sheffield United, and it would be unrealistic to expect too much given how the past few seasons have gone. Maresca is likely to be asked about Phillips’ situation and the midfielder himself may take the opportunity to shed some light on how things have turned out since joining from Leeds United in 2022.Kalvin Phillips will be part of City’s touring party (Cameron Smith/Getty Images)Maresca also appeared resigned to losing James Trafford this summer. City have been expecting the goalkeeper to leave and the Italian could only offer a standard non-committal answer when asked about his future, amid strong interest from Leeds. “When the transfer window is open, now or in January, anything can happen,” he said. “So we’ll see but at the moment, he’s one of our keepers.”Considering the two worked together during Maresca’s time as under-23s coach, and that Trafford is well suited to the manager’s possession-based style, there could have been an opportunity to turn the England keeper’s fortunes around at City.But a transfer appears inevitable and, with Trafford on holiday after the World Cup anyway, Donnarumma will continue as City’s No 1 throughout the summer and most likely beyond.Preparing for a new season in Asia has not always been easy for City in recent years.Commercially, their trip to Japan and South Korea in 2023 was enormously successful, with 23,000 people turning up to see a training session in Seoul as the club made $20million overall. Players struggled to sleep, though, and it was often too hot to train. Pep Guardiola often made veiled comments about not particularly enjoying summer jaunts too far from home, whatever the continent, and in 2016 a game against Manchester United in Beijing, China, was cancelled due to an already poor pitch becoming waterlogged.City were able to take a full squad to Asia in 2023, a rare occasion with no major summer international tournament, and fans in both Tokyo and Seoul queued for hours at various events to see the club’s biggest names, like Haaland, Grealish and Kevin De Bruyne.The picture is slightly different now. Haaland is bigger than ever but is not involved, while Grealish’s stock has fallen and De Bruyne is gone — but despite expectations that only few of the first-teamers would be available, the majority of them will be vying to nail down their spots in Maresca’s plans and give the club’s fans in the region plenty to be excited about. The team’s new away kit will be launched in Hong Kong later this week.Maresca confirmed on Friday that Haaland, Rodri, Cherki and the England players will rejoin the squad “three to four days” before the Community Shield against Arsenal in Cardiff on August 16. It will inevitably take them a little longer than their team-mates to get up to speed, although that is not especially new at City.Guardiola never liked to do too many pre-season games and essentially used the August Premier League games before the first international breaks as the ‘real’ pre-season where players got their fitness up, rather than flogging them with physical tests in the summer.Maresca has generally focused on tactical work in pre-season and, at Chelsea, was keen to put across his ideas on where and how players should be positioned. In that sense, the City players should be well used to that, given their time with Guardiola, and with many of them on the tour, the core of the team should be in decent shape when the remaining big names return.