Pep Guardiola gives Kyle Walker injury update ahead of Man City vs Inter Champions League final

Pep Guardiola has revealed Kyle Walker has suffered a back injury in the build-up to Manchester City’s Champions League final against Inter Milan.

The defender was the only absentee in City’s open training session on Tuesday, as the rest of the squad went their paces in front of the cameras. Walker was replaced in the latter stages of Saturday’s FA Cup win over Manchester United and the knock is still impacting three days later.

“He has a disturbance in his back,” Guardiola explained in the pre-match press conference. “He had a disturbance in his back. Yesterday he was not good and oday he was a little bit better. We didn’t want to take a risk and we will see what happens in the next days.”

If Walker is absent, Manuel Akanji or John Stones could deputise at right-back, while Rico Lewis is also an option. There had been reports on social media that Akanji missed training, but the Swiss defender was involved in the session at City’s training base.

This is City’s second Champions League final and the Blues lost their only previous match at this stage of the tournament, when they were beaten 1-0 by Chelsea in 2021. Guardiola was asked if he feels there is anything different going into Saturday’s match in Istanbul, compared to the 2021 final defeat.

“One week ago we won the FA Cup,” explained the Catalan. “In that moment we were just preparing a final, we’d lost two times against Thomas Tuchel’s team and had some doubts about if we could do it. It is not the same but they play five in the back, both teams, Chelsea and Inter.

“The approach was defensive too but of course Chelsea also had incredibly good patterns to play and punish us. I would not say it’s similar but there are some things. Hopefully we can attack a little bit better than we did in that time.”