Man City title Ballon d’Or winner Rodri in squad for Champions League run in | Football News | USAEMALL.com

Manchester City include Rodri in their Champions League squad as hopes rise of return from injury this season.

Manchester City showed faith in Rodri’s potential return to action this season by registering the injured Ballon d’Or winner in its Champions League squad for the knockout phase.

UEFA set a midnight Thursday deadline to submit updated squad lists for European competitions. With a limit of three new signings in the midseason transfer window allowed, City left teenage defender Vitor Reis – who joined from Palmeiras last month – out of their squad for the knockout stages of Europe’s premier club competition was revealed on Friday.

It was initially feared that Rodri’s season was over, but the Spanish international has set a target of about April – “six to seven months” after tearing the ACL in his right knee against Arsenal on September 22 – to return to play. The Champions League quarterfinals start April 8.

The English champions have a daunting task to stay in the competition until then without star midfielder Rodri, who scored the winning goal in the 2023 final against Inter Milan.

City face Real Madrid in a two-leg knockout playoff, next Tuesday and on February 19. The winner will play either Atletico Madrid or Bayer Leverkusen in the round of 16.

Speaking to reporters on Friday in advance of City’s FA Cup clash at Leyton Orient on Saturday, City manager Pep Guardiola said: “After the game [at Orient] we will come back early to Manchester and after we have time to start to talk [about Real Madrid].

“Of course I have an eye to Madrid but Leyton Orient deserve my attention; always it has been like that. Otherwise we would not get the amount of semi-finals and finals of the FA Cup that we had in the last five, six years.”

New signings who are also included in coach Pep Guardiola’s squad for the Champions League are midfielder Nico Gonzalez — who can stand in for Rodri — forward Omar Marmoush, and defender Abdukodir Khusanov.

Guardiola said that 23-year-old Gonzalez, who signed on transfer deadline day on Monday, is “really important”.

The former Barcelona and Bayern Munich manager added: “It’s a position where we were weak after the absence from Rodri.

“I know him from the Barcelona academy and his father was working here. I’m really pleased from the effort of the club to bring him here for the next years.”