Scouts present for Manchester City at Europa League clash on Thursday night – Three names identified as potential targets | OneFootball

Manchester City sent scouts to represent the club at one of the Europa League knockout phase play-off first-leg matches held on Thursday, it has been revealed.

The Premier League champions are seemingly continuing their search for fresh recruits to bring into a new generation of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City squad amid a challenging campaign across competitions.

The recent January transfer market saw the first phase of an anticipated rebuild of the squad as a spend of over €200 million was sanctioned that saw four new faces come directly into the Etihad Stadium picture for the second-half of the season and beyond.

That outlay was also aside from a number of new faces brought in as development options as Juma Bah arrived from Real Valladolid before being sent out on loan to RC Lens, while Christian McFarlane joined from New York City and embedded himself into the Academy.

And now the club’s search has resumed in European competition, with a new report revealing the trip embarked upon by Manchester City officials in the UEFA Europa League earlier this week.

According to the information of Scouts in Attendance on X, City were one of a number of clubs with representatives present to watch proceedings in Denmark between FC Midtjylland and Real Sociedad in the UEFA Europa League knockout play-off round.

It is further revealed that alongside the Premier League champions at Midtjylland on Thursday night were representatives from Bundesliga trio Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, and Bayer Leverkusen, as well as Italy’s AC Milan and Bologna, and France’s Stade Rennais.

Among the names highlighted by the report were Martin Zubimendi, Ousmane Diao, Dario Osorio, and Valdemar Byskov Andreasen – all as a result of recent transfer speculation concerning the four players.

In the case of Zubimendi, the Spanish midfielder was one of the most widely-reported players when it came to Manchester City transfer links in the lead-up to the January transfer window this year.

However, the Premier League champions moved swiftly to brief to various sections of the media that they did not expect to conclude a deal for the player at the midway stage of the season, in a similar case to Newcastle United’s Bruno Guimaraes.

Since those events, a number of factors have altered with City having secured the signing of Nico Gonzalez from Porto in a €60 million deal, and Arsenal emerging as clear frontrunners and most likely club to sign Martin Zubimendi when the market reopens in the summer.