ESPN

Oct 1, 2026, 10:25 AM ET

Nico O'Reilly will return to Manchester City and play no further part in England's upcoming Nations League games after he picked up an injury.

The left back played all of England's defeat to Spain in their opening game of the international break, but was absent from Tuesday's 2-0 win against Czechia having missed training in the buildup to the game.

In a statement, England said on Thursday that the City defender was returning to his club for "further assessment."

The statement added that no further replacements were planned to join up with the squad.

England did not state the nature or severity of the issue. O'Reilly withdrew from the starting lineup for City's game against Coventry in early September with a back issue, and missed the following game against Porto.

O'Reilly becomes the sixth player to withdraw from Thomas Tuchel's squad, following Cole Palmer, Declan Rice, Marcus Rashford, Kobbie Mainoo and Tino Livramento.

The news of O'Reilly's return to Manchester comes after Tuchel said on Wednesday that he hoped the defender would be fit to face Croatia on Saturday.

"We will push everyone to be available, even Ezri Konsa and Nico O'Reilly hopefully and then we know more," the England manager said.

As well as the game against Croatia, O'Reilly will also miss England's second encounter with Czechia on Tuesday.

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Manchester City face Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday, Oct. 11 in their first game back after the international break.

It will also be the club's first game since they were found guilty of over 100 breaches of the Premier League's financial rules.

The club were found to have arranged what the league called "sham" contracts, artificially inflating their commercial revenue by £830 million ($1.08 billion) between 2009 and 2018.

Information from PA contributed to this report.