Manchester City’s promised summer spending has begun with the agreement of a fee for Milan’s Tijjani Reijnders. The 26-year-old midfielder will cost €55m (£46.3m) and has agreed personal terms for a five-year contract.
The Netherlands international will become the first of a number of signings the club chair, Khaldoon al‑Mubarak, pledged before City take part in the Club World Cup. A special transfer window has been opened for Fifa’s new competition.
Reijnders, principally an attacking midfielder, was a bright spark in a disappointing season for Milan, scoring 15 goals. With Kevin De Bruyne leaving – and a number of other players expected to follow, Jack Grealish probably included – a new-look City, rather different from the deposed champions of 2024-25, is being built at pace. They are linked with the Wolves full-back Rayan Aït-Nouri.
“We already started that rebuild of this team in January,” Khaldoon said last week in a club interview. “We have clearly identified who exactly are the targets, in what positions, and we have our clear number one option, our clear number two option. Our objective is to try to be ready with the new squad for the Club World Cup.”
In the January window City spent about £180m on Abdukodir Khusanov, Omar Marmoush, Nico González, Vitor Reis, Juma Bah and Christian McFarlane, while Claudio Echeverri, who was signed the previous year, was thrown on as a surprise substitute in the FA Cup final defeat by Crystal Palace.
Pep Guardiola, meanwhile, has made it clear he does not want to work with a bloated squad, despite City’s heavy workload in the US and next season. He said last month: “As a manager I cannot train 24 players and every time I select I have to have four, five, six stay in Manchester at home because they cannot play. This is not going to happen. I said to the club: ‘I don’t want that.’”
“The clubs are still in talks. For me it’s wait and see now,” Reijnders told Voetbal International. “The Premier League is a great league, you dream of that as a little boy.”
A move for Bayer Leverkusen’s Florian Wirtz, also linked heavily with Liverpool, was not firmed up, reportedly on grounds of cost. The transfer window for Premier League clubs is open between 1 June and 10 June, and then from 16 June to 1 September.
As first reported by the Telegraph on Wednesday, Grealish looks set to miss out on City’s 35-man squad for the Club World Cup. The England international was not called from the bench in the Wembley defeat to Palace and missed the final-day Premier League trip to Fulham altogether.
Not being involved in this summer’s tournament in the US will increase speculation over the 29-year-old’s future at the Etihad. Another midfielder who will not feature in the tournament is Mateo Kovacic, who has been ruled out following Achilles surgery.
