“I will come back stronger,” the Brazilian striker promised on Twitter, in a short message accompanied by an emoticon of hands folded in prayer.
He will pass under the hands of the surgeon “in the coming days” in Doha (Qatar) and will be absent from the field for “three to four months”, warned PSG, two days before a decisive match at Bayern Munich.
The player “has presented several episodes of instability of the right ankle in recent years” and “the medical staff of Paris Saint-Germain recommended a ligament repair operation, in order to avoid a major risk of recurrence”, specified the capital club
While disputing a ball with Benjamin André on February 19 once morest Lille in Ligue 1, “Ney”‘s ankle twisted once once more.
The Brazilian came out in tears. In recent days, coach Christophe Galtier had warned that his player would be absent in Munich anyway, where PSG must overturn a one-goal disadvantage on Wednesday (9:00 p.m.) to hope to qualify for the quarter-finals of the League of Nations. champions.
A big meeting is still missing
Saturday, during the celebrations of Kylian Mbappé’s 201st Parisian goal, we saw him on the lawn on crutches, like Presnel Kimpembe, victim of a ruptured right Achilles tendon and forfeited him until the fall.
The relapse is terrible for Ney, who will once more miss a major European meeting with PSG.
His repeated injuries deprived him of a 1/8 final return of C1 once morest Real Madrid in 2018 (hit to a bone in the foot), 1/8 the following year once morest Manchester United, still for a foot problem, and another 1/8 once morest Barça in 2021. This time it was the left adductor who had dropped.
When he is not injured, the Brazilian crack takes PSG to the final in 2020, lost once morest Bayern (1-0), but his fragility caught up with him.
His foot had already turned at the World Cup, in the first game once morest Serbia. After intense care, Ney returned but his tournament once once more ended in tears, in the quarter-finals, once morest Croatia (1-1, 4 pens to 2), where he nevertheless scored a magnificent goal .
Fine from “MNM”?
In 2014, a serious rib injury stopped him before the semi-finals, and the “Seleçao” collapsed once morest Germany in the memorable 7-1.
The player, recruited at a golden price in 2017, at the same time as Mbappé, for 222 million euros, only shone intermittently at PSG.
His season is probably over since the 38th and last day of Ligue 1 is scheduled for June 3 and the C1 final is scheduled for June 10.
He will have played only 49% of PSG’s Ligue 1 matches since his arrival (112 out of 228) and in the Champions League, he will have played 41 of the 55 matches, including Wednesday’s, a meager performance for a player from this price.
We will probably not see the famous “MNM” Lionel Messi, Neymar, Mbappé once more this season, and perhaps never once more if one of the three leaves the club in the summer.
Paradoxically, the eleven found a certain balance in the absence of his Brazilian genius. The Messi-Mbappé duo is fueled with eight goals and four assists between them in the last three matches. “Kyky” scored five times, the “Pulga” three, and they managed two “assists” each.
“To tell you that Ney’s absence is trivial, no,” said Galtier on Friday. “He is one of the best passers in Ligue 1 and it is still a detrimental absence for us”.
But in 3-5-2, the eleven put in place by the technician is more balanced, and the very thin defensive withdrawal of Messi and Mbappé is seen less than with three, even if Neymar was the one of the trio who defended the most.
Paris must learn to do without Neymar, but unfortunately he is used to it…
