Quintet’s return gives Cooper an abundance of options in the heart of the City defence
LEICESTER City are back to full strength, with their international quintet returning to training at Seagrave.
The five City players who featured at Euro 2024 and Copa America had been given an extended holiday.
But yesterday, two weeks after their colleagues returned, they began their preparations for the new campaign.
It means summer signing Bobby De Cordova-Reid is working alongside his new team-mates for the first time since his free transfer from Fulham.
It also allows City boss Steve Cooper to have a closer look at goalkeeper Mads Hermansen, last season’s first-choice centre-back duo Wout Faes and Jannik Vestergaard, as well as Victor Kristiansen.
The left-back is a particularly interesting case at the Foxes this summer.
He spent last season on loan at Bologna, helping them to qualify for the Champions League, after requesting to leave because he did not like the position Enzo Maresca had planned for him.
With Cooper potentially using full-backs more traditionally, rather than inverted as Maresca did, Kristiansen could now have a role to play in the team this season.
Cooper also has decisions to make at centre-back now Faes and Vestergaard
have returned. With Conor Coady, Ben Nelson, Harry Souttar and new signing Caleb Okoli also to choose from, Cooper has abundance of options in the heart of defence, and it’s likely one of the six will be moved on.
Cooper’s thoughts will be the main factor in who stays and who goes.
“We’ve got the boys returning from international duty,” Cooper told the club.
“It’s important they got a good few weeks’ rest. They needed it. They rejoin on Monday and that will be good.”
The quintet are very unlikely to be involved in City’s first public preseason match at Shrewsbury tonight, meaning young players will continue to fill gaps in the squad.
Cooper took development squad talents Brandon Cover, Sammy Braybrooke, Will Alves, Logan Briggs and Silko Thomas with the firstteam squad to Evian last week, and they will hope to get more chances to stake a claim to permanently rise into the senior ranks.
“We’ve had young players here, which is always important to me and always important for the club,” Cooper said from Evian.
“They’ve had some good training and lots of them have had good minutes, so they’ll go back in a stronger place.”