When Sadio Mane sat down on the grass yesterday in the 15th minute of the match between Bayern Munich and Werder Bremen, he knew that the worst thing for him was the timing.
minus the hardware.
On the surface, his injury really didn't look serious, but with his Senegal team's first World Cup match against the Netherlands less than two weeks away, Mane was out of the game and hoping for the best.
"He will have to do x-rays," said his coach Julian Nagelsmann at the end, who at this point believed he would be fine, but yesterday at noon the news came out.
According to the French newspaper "L'Equipe", the player is suffering from a tendon injury.
Not a serious injury, but one that requires a few weeks of recovery.
Due to the tight schedule brought with it by the winter World Cup in Qatar, the headline is that Sadio Mane will miss the World Cup.
The list of injured and those in doubt is long and getting longer every day, and Mane is the first superstar to join it.
He is the sole star of Senegal, and the one who scored her two most important penalties in recent years: the one that brought her the African Championship, and the one that gave her the ticket to the World Cup.
Both, by the way, against Egypt.
Mane also came second in the Ballon d'Or elections about a month ago, and his absence is a very hard blow to his team and the prestige of the tournament.
Without him, her chances of making history and becoming the first African to pass the quarter-finals are significantly smaller.
On Friday national team coach Elio Sissa will submit his official squad for the World Cup, and it will be intriguing to hear how he takes it.
The Senegalese's injury increased the discussion about the "Mecca of Qatar 2022".
The feeling is that the tight schedule and the lack of rest increased the number of injured, but some mention that this happens before every World Cup. In 2018, for example, the Englishman Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, the Tunisian Youssef Meskani, the French Laurent Koscielny and others were absent due to injury. The 2014 Missed Radamel Falcao, Marco Reus, Kevin Strootman and many more.
Injuries are a part of the game, certainly in the busy schedule of the last few years, and in fact, holding the tournament in the winter and in the middle of the season is still proven to be too damaging.
The website "THE ATHLETIC" looked into the matter in depth, and discovered that the current number of injuries is more or less the same as it was in the summer of 2018. At the same time, the lack of a real break makes relatively minor injuries - like Mane's - critical.
In the end, the conclusion is one: there is no way to prevent injuries, and they will appear before the World Cup and affect it.
However, in this World Cup, much more than in previous ones, the real concern concerns the injuries that will follow.
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