With only a few days to go until an era defining Champions League final for Manchester City, the last thing that Pep Guardiola needed was for one of his players to get an injury that could rule him out of the European showpiece.
Moreover, the fact that it’s one of his irreplaceable stars only adds to Pep’s woes.
Inter will clearly do everything in their power to upset the odds on Saturday, though if the final is true to form, Man City should win the game at a canter and earn themselves a treble in the process.
In so doing, they’d be just the second team in England to complete the feat of Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League all in the same season and, after Milan, would then make Manchester only the second city to have more than one winner of the Champions League.
Saturday’s match promises to be fascinating for so many reasons, not least if Kyle Walker hasn’t recovered in time, and Inter may target City’s right hand side as a result.
“He has had a little bit of a disturbance in his back,” Guardiola told reporters at a press conference (h/t Independent).
“Yesterday he was not good, today he was a little bit better but we didn’t want to take any risks. We will see in the next days.”
Though it was once believed that Walker couldn’t play in Pep’s latest variant of his system, the right-back has proven over the past few weeks that he not only can understand it, but he’s made his role his own.
That’s testament to the work and effort both Walker himself and his manager have put in, but it could all be in vain and mean the player misses the biggest football game of his career.