Gallery: How Man City could line up for opening pre-season game: Grealish, Haaland & five youth products – gallery

Manchester City’s players are due to report back for pre-season training from the week commencing 15 July.

The players are then set to jet off to the USA within a few days of returning, where they face summer friendlies against Celtic, AC Milan, Barcelona and Chelsea. However, it’s not clear at this stage exactly when individual players will be returning.

The high-profile players who will be back in that first week includes Erling Haaland and Jack Grealish, with the latter already returning to the club’s training base earlier this summer in an attempt to maintain his fitness levels over the summer.

Stefan Ortega, Rico Lewis and Kalvin Phillips are among the other senior players expected back in that first week, although there is a real shortage of Pep Guardiola’s established stars. Fifteen of the squad are playing at the Euros or Copa America this summer, while two players – Sergio Gomez and Julian Alvarez – are set to play at the Olympics and will almost certainly miss the whole of the summer tour.

There is a chance that Josko Gvardiol and Mateo Kovacic will be part of the squad that flies to America following Croatia’s early exit from Euro 2024, while Kevin De Bruyne should also play some part in the States.

However, Guardiola’s squad will have to be supplemented with youth players and there’s every chance that a few of the talented youngsters will be given the opportunity to impress Guardiola across the four friendlies.

It’ll be a mixture of experience and underage talents that line up for that first game against Celtic in a few weeks’ time – here’s the XI we think Guardiola could select…