Geronimo Rulli Returns to Manchester City for £1.7m

Manchester City have brought Geronimo Rulli back to the Etihad, completing a £1.7m move for the Argentina international goalkeeper from Marseille on a two-year contract.

This is not Rulli’s first brush with City. He was on their books in the 2016-17 season, a name on the squad list but never on the teamsheet, leaving without a single first-team appearance. Eight years on, he comes back as a very different figure: a World Cup winner, a Copa America champion, and a goalkeeper with a highlight reel that stretches across Europe.

The defining snapshot of his career so far came in Gdańsk in 2021. Villarreal versus Manchester United. Europa League final. Penalty shootout drifting into the realms of the absurd. Rulli stepped up, buried his own spot-kick, then stared down David de Gea and saved the United keeper’s effort to seal the trophy. A goalkeeper deciding a European final at both ends of the pitch – that kind of moment sticks.

Since that night, his status has only grown. Rulli has earned eight caps for Argentina and was part of the squads that lifted the 2022 World Cup and the 2024 Copa America, sharing a dressing room with the core of a golden generation and training daily at the highest international intensity.

His club journey has been equally varied. Real Sociedad in La Liga, where he first built his reputation. Montpellier in Ligue 1. Ajax in the Netherlands. Then Marseille, another pressure-cooker environment in a football-obsessed city. Each stop has added layers of experience, from European nights to domestic title races and the grind of weekly scrutiny.

City now tap into that bank of knowledge. At 34, Rulli arrives not as a project for tomorrow but as a ready-made, battle-tested option for today, someone who has seen enough of the game’s extremes to stay calm when it starts to fray at the edges.

He left Manchester once as an unknown quantity. He returns as a decorated goalkeeper with medals, scars and stories – and this time, the Etihad will know exactly who he is.