(Football news) Maguire had a muscle issue that kept him out of Manchester United’s last four Premier League games in 2023–24, but he was anticipated to be well for the encounter at Wembley Stadium.
However, Ten Hag has declared the center-back ineligible for this weekend because his ailment “is not healing as expected.”
The 31-year-old, who will have made 31 appearances for the Red Devils in all competitions by season’s end, stated on Wednesday that he wasn’t sure if he would be available for the championship.
However, he is set to be fit to represent England at Euro 2024, with Maguire seemingly only just missing out on an appearance against the Premier League champions on Saturday.
Maguire out of FA Cup final
There is positive news on the injury front, though, as Victor Lindelof, Mason Mount and Anthony Martial are set to be available for selection this weekend.
Lindelof has been missing since the end of March, while Martial has not played since December; Mount has also been unavailable of late due to an unspecified issue, but the trio could be in the squad.
“Harry Maguire is unavailable but the rest, all the players you mentioned [Lindelof, Mount and Martial], they are – I think – available,” Ten Hag told reporters at his pre-match press conference. “We have, tomorrow, final training and then we have final decisions. But, as I oversee it now, it looks good.”
Ten Hag denied that Maguire had suffered a setback in his recovery, with the Englishman simply being unable to recover from his muscular issue in time.
“I don’t think so. It’s just he doesn’t make it. It didn’t heal as we expected,” he added.
Lindelof, Martial, Mount all set to be available
Tyrell Malacia and Luke Shaw are also set to be absent this weekend, with the latter seemingly failing to recover from a muscular problem of his own, and he is also a major doubt to represent England at Euro 2024.
“It’s all about trophies but you need an opportunity to win a trophy. So last ten years, not so many trophies in this club but we have an opportunity to win two trophies in two years,” Ten Hag added.
“Every game I want to win and that’s it, I just focus on this game as I do for every game, I know it’s an important game as it’s about a trophy.
“I came here to win trophies, Saturday, the next opportunity we achieved this, we earned this opportunity as a team and now we have to go for it and in the same time in the last two years of course, after every season you review it and we will see where we are in the project, things we have to change, we spoke lately about it, very good things, players coming up, values coming up and on Saturday we have a big opportunity to win the next trophy.”
Should Manchester United win the FA Cup, they would qualify for the group stage of the 2024-25 Europa League, but a defeat would leave them without any form of European football for next season.
Also read: Euro 2024 and all you need to know about it
