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A hard blow for the Taranga Lions, Bayern Munich striker Sadio Mané will not play in the FIFA World Cup. The captain of the Senegalese selection withdrew due to his injury to the right fibula.
Disaster in Senegal, the injury of its leader Sadio Mané is finally too serious, he had to forfeit the World Cup-2022, Thursday November 17, depriving one of the outsiders of his best player and the competition of one of its stars.
“We unfortunately decide to declare Sadio’s withdrawal from the World Cup,” said 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 “Lions” on their ground of Lusail, in Doha.
“Unfortunately, today’s (Thursday) MRI shows us that the evolution is not favorable as we imagined,” said the doctor, adding that “surgery should be scheduled very soon” to operate the player.
Sadio Mané was being treated in Munich by doctors from his club, Bayern, and had not joined his teammates in Qatar, where Senegal begins its competition against the Netherlands on Monday.
It will therefore be without their leader, who guided them to the Lions’ first African Cup victory last February and finished second in the Ballon d’Or standings at the end of a magnificent season.
Since his injury on November 8 with Bayern in the victory against Bremen (6-1), on contact with Werder defender Amos Pieper, everything has 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. It had been decided to carry out new MRIs on Thursday.
“Irreplaceable”
“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,” replied the manager with a little hesitation.
After the injury, Sadio Mané and his entourage first thought they had to forfeit, before regaining hope. And, after the visit of the doctor of the selection, it was decided on November 10 to include him all the same in the list of 26 players selected for the World Cup.
Coach Aliou Cissé must now find a replacement for him, he has until Sunday, the day before the match against the “Oranje”.
Former Dutch teammate of Mané in Liverpool, Virgil van Dijk reacted to the announcement of his withdrawal by tweeting that he would have “liked to play against him” during this Senegal-Netherlands.
The Senegalese, he wrote, “have players to replace him, but not of the same quality. He really is an exceptional player, I will miss him”.
“Mané is irreplaceable”, explained Senegalese Pape Gueye in an interview with AFP before the formalization of the package. “But we have very good attackers, side players with a bit of their style: speed, percussion”. A glimmer of hope in a dark day for Senegal.
With AFP
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