Manchester City player’s omission from NT squad ‘particularly striking’ – Injury concerns raised

Manchester City’s Nathan Aké has been left out of the Netherlands squad for this month’s international break.

Oranje will face Hungary and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the UEFA Nations League. Their manager, Ronald Koeman, had included the 29-year-old in his pre-selection list.

Koeman has decided to leave the Manchester City player out of the final squad for these two fixtures.

NOS cover Koeman’s latest squad announcement and state the centre-back is one of the five players to be dropped from the pre-selection list.

The other four are PSV Eindhoven’s Guus Til, Aston Villa’s Ian Maatsen, Ajax’s Kenneth Taylor and RB Leipzig’s Lutsharel Geertruida.

NOS say the absence of Geertruida and Aké is ‘particularly striking’. They suspect it could be related to injury concerns.

Back in September, Aké picked up a hamstring injury in the Netherlands’ 2-2 draw against Germany. This forced him to spend over a month on the sidelines and miss last month’s international break.

The defender returned to action in Manchester City’s Champions League win over Sparta Prague in October. Since then, he’s played 74 minutes in the EFL Cup defeat to Tottenham Hotspur and 73 minutes in the 2-1 loss to Bournemouth in the league.