Rodgers hails new attitude that will guarantee games for Benkovic

FILIP Benkovic will get game-time at Leicester City this season after a “shift in his mentality” prompted manager Brendan Rodgers to hand the centre-back a fresh opportunity.

The Croatian defender has not played for City since January 2020 and was afforded just one competitive appearance in his two loan spells at Cardiff and OH Leuven last season.

Prior to those stints away, Rodgers had said Benkovic was not ready to play in the Premier League.

However, the 24-year-old has been brought back into the fold, featuring in pre-season games and managing to win over the City manager.

Amid injuries in defence, Benkovic has been retained and was last week given a surprise spot in the Europa League and Premier League squads.

It is likely that when every City centre-back is fit, he is still sixth choice behind Jonny Evans, Wesley Fofana, Caglar Soyuncu, Jannik Vestergaard and Daniel Amartey, but Rodgers has said opportunities will be there for him to add to his two senior City appearances so far.

“He’s come back and had a good pre-season,” Rodgers said. “We decided to keep him here because of the situation we’ve had with injuries.

With Wesley going down and Jannik and Jonny having some issues, we couldn’t be left short.

“But I’ve also seen a shift in his mentality. It’s been a difficult couple of years for him. He’s played nowhere near the games he would have liked to, and I would have wanted.

“But he’s come back and over the course of these next few months, he’s going to be close around the group, and I’m sure he’ll get some game-time. Then we can assess it from there.

“I’ve been fortunate enough that I saw him at a really high level when he came to me on loan at Celtic. He played in a number of big games. He played against Leipzig in a game where he was outstanding. So I feel if we can get that player back, to that level, he’s a very valuable player for Leicester City.”

Since joining City from Dinamo Zagreb for £13 million in 2018, Benkovic has played just 40 matches, with 27 of those coming on loan at Celtic in 2018-19.

After injury disrupted the end of that season, he stayed at City for six months before moving on loan to Bristol City, where he was in and out of the team in a spell broken up by the pandemic.

Although he only played once last season, he did maintain his fitness and was an unused substitute on 21 occasions.

He played in all four of City’s preseason friendlies and was on the bench for the Community Shield, but has not been included in a matchday squad since.

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