Club Brugge’s 22-year-old centre-back still needs surgery on the metatarsal he damaged in the summer. Belgian reporting on 15 September set out the timetable: a return before the end of the calendar year is considered “particularly difficult”, with a realistic comeback pushed to after the winter break.

Villa pulled out at the medical stage

Aston Villa were the earliest suitors, chasing Ordóñez through August with negotiations that had reached advanced stages. According to Sport Witness, the club’s own medical evaluation flagged physical concerns during the process and Villa stepped back. In the Belgian reporting on the same window, Villa were also understood not to want to match Crystal Palace financially once the London club moved in.

Palace’s medical was where it formally broke

Crystal Palace agreed a €30m loan with an obligation to buy, plus performance bonuses and a sell-on clause of more than 10%, according to Voetbalkrant’s summary of the terms. Ordóñez travelled to London.

The medical was where the deal collapsed. Palace’s doctors already knew about the metatarsal problem, but the injury was understood to be worse than the Eagles originally believed, BBC Sport reported. Palace decided he would not be available soon enough and cancelled.

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Ordóñez himself thought he would be back by now

“I spent practically my entire vacation in a boot and on crutches, thinking I’d recover quickly. But my body needed more time, and now I’m going to need a few more months to be fully back,” Ordóñez told reporters ahead of Brugge’s Champions League game with Villa on 8 September.

He first felt the fracture during Ecuador’s World Cup run, playing on pain-management injections until he could no longer bear weight on the foot. He has not started a match for Brugge this season.

Brugge plan a season without a first-choice defender

Ordóñez has been in Belgium since 2023, when Club Brugge signed him from Independiente del Valle in Ecuador. He is a first-choice central defender when fit.

The Belgians kept him this summer as a result. They are now planning around an operation whose date has not been fixed, with head coach Ivan Leko facing an extended run without one of his senior centre-backs.

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The next transfer window opens in January.

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