Unai Emery, the manager of Aston Villa, has admitted that excluding Donyell Malen and Andres Garcia from his Champions League squad was a tough choice.
The Premier League team finished in the top eight of the League Phase standings, earning them a spot in the competition’s round of 16.
Even though Emery won’t be playing on the continent again until early March, he has had to choose his team for the next round in the last 24 hours.
During the winter transfer window, up to five players were added, with Marcus Rashford, Marco Asensio, and Axel Disasi joining Garcia and Malen.
Emery, who was only permitted to add three players to his squad, has given the go-ahead to the latter three even though they all arrived at the West Midlands club on Sunday and Monday.
A letdown for Garcia, Malen
Despite the fact that it was probably their top priority when they signed their respective contracts, Garcia and Malen must now deal with the disappointment of missing out on any European action during the final three-and-a-half months of the season.
Emery acknowledged during a press conference on Friday that he did not enjoy the experience of removing the two from his Champions League plans.
“The rules can only accept and register three changes,” the Spaniard told reporters. In the transfer window, we made more changes than we had intended.
“Because Jaden (Philogene) was a club-trained player, we lost the chance to have another player, but even so, we lost one more.
“We can only register three players because we changed five. Andres Garcia and Donyell Malen are out as a result of the decisions we had to make yesterday. Naturally, I regret the choice I had to make yesterday, but I justified it to Andres and Donyell after speaking with them about it.”
Issues to come?
Garcia only played in his first-ever Premier League match as a professional on Saturday when he started against Wolverhampton Wanderers and won.
Malen, on the other hand, played for the German powerhouses in the previous season’s final and represented Borussia Dortmund in the group stage.
The promise of playing in the Champions League would have played a role in his decision to join Villa, but he was cut after only 70 Premier League games.