Manchester City confirm pre-season plans for two first-team stars

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Pep Guardiola’s squad is set to boosted by the arrivals of two key players this week.

Manchester City have confirmed that two of their star players will meet up with the squad for the ‘second leg’ of their summer pre-season tour of the US.

The Premier League champions jetted out to America on Friday ahead of four pre-season games. With the involvement of 16 players at Euro 2024 or Copa America, the 27-man group that flew from Manchester was made up predominantly of youth-team players, but the likes of Jack Grealish, Erling Haaland, Ederson and Kalvin Phillips are also part of the group.

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City play Celtic in the early hours of Wednesday morning in North Carolina before flying off to New York City. There, Josko Gvardiol and Mateo Kovacic will join the camp.

The duo are the only City players expected to meet up with the squad in the US from the 16 who played at major championships this summer. Gvardiol and Kovacic were eliminated at the group stage with Croatia and, having enjoyed a four-and-a-half week break, will return to their club side.

Whether the pair are ready to play any part in City’s second pre-season clash against AC Milan is unclear. The Blues face Paulo Fonseca’s side at the Yankee Stadium on Saturday night. After that, City take on Barcelona in Orlando and Chelsea in Ohio. The club’s first competitive game of the new season comes on 10 August, when Pep Guardiola’s side face Manchester United in the Community Shield.

Several players should be available by then, including those who went out in the last-16 and quarter-final stages of this summer’s tournaments. That includes Manuel Akanji, Ruben Dias, Joao Cancelo, Matheus Nunes, Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva, Jeremy Doku and new arrival Savio.

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It’s less clear when Nathan Ake, John Stones, Kyle Walker, Rodri and Phil Foden will be back, with the quintet making it to the final week of Euro 2024. Julian Alvarez’s availability is also up in the air, with the Argentinian set to compete at the Olympic Games in the coming weeks.

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