Gerónimo Rulli Returns to Manchester City for £1.7m

Manchester City have brought Gerónimo Rulli back to the Etihad, agreeing a £1.7m deal with Marseille for the Argentina international goalkeeper.

Now 34, Rulli signs a two-year contract and returns to a club where, on paper, he has already been a City player once before. During the 2016-17 season he was on the books but never made a first-team appearance, his time effectively passing unnoticed in Manchester.

This version of Rulli is very different.

He arrives as a World Cup winner, a Copa America winner and the veteran of one of European football’s most dramatic penalty shootouts. In the 2021 Europa League final for Villarreal against Manchester United, Rulli not only converted his own spot-kick in the shootout but then saved from David de Gea to seal the trophy in Gdańsk. A goalkeeper deciding a European final at both ends of the pitch – that kind of moment lingers in a career.

Rulli has eight caps for Argentina and was part of the squads that lifted the 2022 World Cup and the 2024 Copa America, adding heavyweight international pedigree to a club career that has taken him across the continent. Before his stint at Marseille, he featured for Real Sociedad in Spain, Montpellier in France and Ajax in the Netherlands, building a reputation as a technically sound, composed presence with the ball at his feet.

For City, this is a move that blends experience and familiarity. For Rulli, it is a second chance at a club that once passed him by, and an opportunity to write the Etihad chapter of his story rather than simply be a footnote in its paperwork.