Melbourne Victory captain Carl Valeri will return from injury this Saturday night to take on cross town rivals Melbourne City at Etihad Stadium.
Valeri missed last weekend's season opening 1-1 draw with Adelaide United, after copping a knock to the knee at training last week.
โCarl's trained this morning, he'll have a recovery session (today) and he'll have to train Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to be available. But we're expecting him to get through those sessions,'' Coach Kevin Muscat said at training on Tuesday morning.
Jason Geria, Scott Galloway, Giancarlo Callifuoco and Connor Pain also all missed the match due to Olyroos duty.
โThe Olyroos boys, it'll be a bonus to get some numbers back, we'll have to wait and see how much they play in the second game and how they recover. It's a big ask but they should be fine.," Muscat said.
Over 25,000 tickets have already been sold for the derby, with last season's derby record of 45,202 a chance to be broken this Saturday night.