Manchester City Reunites with Geronimo Rulli for €2m Deal

Manchester City have turned to a familiar name to sit behind Gianluigi Donnarumma, agreeing a €2m (£1.7m) deal to bring Geronimo Rulli back to the Etihad.

James Trafford’s £40m switch to Leeds left a gap on the bench, but City have not let it linger. Within days, they had locked in a replacement: a World Cup winner, a Europa League hero, and a goalkeeper who once belonged to them without ever pulling on the shirt in a competitive game.

Rulli will sign a two-year contract and arrive from Marseille, where he has spent the last two seasons as the club’s first-choice goalkeeper. At 34, he brings the kind of hardened experience that fits neatly behind a star No 1, especially in a squad chasing trophies on multiple fronts.

This is, technically, his second spell as a City player. Back in 2016, he was signed, immediately loaned to Real Sociedad, and then sold on permanently to the Spanish club without making a single appearance. His career since then has been anything but quiet.

He has moved across Europe, with spells at Montpellier and Ajax, but his defining club moment came with Villarreal. In the 2021 Europa League final against Manchester United, Rulli stepped into the spotlight in the shootout, both scoring his penalty and saving the decisive kick to deliver the trophy.

On the international stage, his role has been more discreet but no less decorated. Rulli was part of Argentina’s World Cup-winning squad in 2022 and the group that finished runners-up this summer, though he did not play a minute in either tournament.

Now he returns to Manchester as a seasoned deputy, a goalkeeper who has seen almost everything the game can throw at him, finally poised to wear City colours in earnest rather than just on the paperwork.