Disaster in Senegal, the injury of its leader Sadio Mané is finally too serious, he had to forfeit the 2022 World Cup on Thursday, depriving one of the outsiders of his best player and the competition of one of its stars. “Unfortunately, we decide to declare Sadio’s withdrawal from the World Cup“, dropped the doctor of the selection, Manuel Afonso, quoted on the Twitter account of the Senegalese Football Federation (FSF).
The bad news fell in the evening, a few hours after the training of the “Lionsat their land in Lusail, Doha.
«Unfortunately, today’s (Thursday) MRI shows us that the evolution is not favorable as we imagined“, specified the doctor, adding that”surgery should be scheduled very soonto operate the player. Bayern management announced that the player had been “successfully operated on Thursday evening in Innsbruck“, in Austria. The Bavarian club adds in a statement released in the evening that Mané “will begin his recovery in Munich in the next few days».
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The striker had not yet joined his teammates in Qatar, where the Senegalese will start their competition against the Netherlands on Monday and had remained in treatment in Munich, under the responsibility of the doctors of his club, Bayern. It will therefore be without their leader, who guided them to the Lions’ first victory in the African Cup of Nations last February and finished second in the Ballon d’Or standings.
Since his injury on November 8 with Bayern in the victory against Bremen (6-1), on contact with Werder defender Amos Pieper, everything had been done to treat the N.10 of the Lions. Afonso traveled to Munich on November 10 and 11 to examine the player and consult the MRIs (magnetic resonance images) again.
IRM fatale
It had been decided to carry out new MRIs on Thursday, which proved to be fatal. “We were prepared since the announcement of the injury“, reacted to AFP the president of the FSF, Augustin Senghor. “We were hanging on to this new MRI. We now learn that his injury is confirmed, everyone agrees that it is his health that takes precedence.» «How did the team take this news? Zen“, answered the leader with a little hesitation.
The injury of November 8 was experienced in Dakar as a real shock. Reacting Thursday evening to the formalization of his absence from the World Cup, Senegalese President Macky Sall wished him “speedy recovery». «Good luck Ñañthio. Health before all. You will come back even stronger!“, he added on Twitter.
Coach Aliou Cissé must now find a replacement for him, he has until Sunday, the day before the match against the “Orange“. Keita Baldé (Sampdoria) being suspended for missing a doping test, he could call Demba Seck, the young (21) left-handed striker from Torino, called up for the friendlies in September. Thursday evening, no replacement had been chosen, we learned from the FSF.