Amid Boca rumours, Nahitan Nández out of Uruguay's 2026 World Cup | OneFootball

Nahitan Nández will not be at the 2026 World Cup with Uruguay. The Uruguayan midfielder, who started 13 of the 18 South American Qualifiers matches, was informed in recent hours that Marcelo Bielsa will not call him up for the World Cup for reasons unrelated to football. The news comes at a key moment for his future, because his agent Pablo Bentancur publicly pressured Boca: “They have to make a move. Today I see it as difficult.”

Nández’s exclusion from the World Cup with La Celeste is a hard blow for the 30-year-old midfielder, who had been a regular part of Bielsa’s setup in the qualifiers. According to reports, the decision is not due to footballing reasons but to outside issues that the coach considered decisive in leaving him off the list.

Meanwhile, his immediate future remains uncertain, with several variables in play. Al-Qadisiya, the Saudi club where he currently plays, has already sent him a renewal offer. In addition, his agent, Bentancur, also confirmed concrete proposals from Mexico and from two Italian clubs. “Nández has one more year on his contract and already has an offer to renew. We received a very important offer from Mexico, and in Italy there are two more clubs,” the agent said in an interview with Carve Deportiva.

But before finalizing anything, Nández is waiting. The hope of returning to Boca, the club where he played between 2017 and 2019 and where he won the Superliga and the Supercopa, remains intact. Riquelme is constantly in informal talks with the player, even jokingly: “Half-jokingly, he sent me a message asking whether I was going to keep vacationing in Arabia and whether I wanted to return to Boca,” Nández himself said at the time.

His agent was clear about the player’s stance and the state of negotiations: “He has a love for Boca, but today I see it as difficult. In this case, the club has to make a move for him.” With a release clause of five million euros, Xeneize would have to negotiate with Al-Qadisiya to unlock the deal. Now it remains to be seen whether not being called up for the World Cup shakes the player enough to decide to come to a more competitive league like Argentina’s.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here.