UDINE. After the consultation came the decision, and with it the farewell to the residual hopes of returning to the field by the end of this season with the Udinese shirt. Gerard Deulofeu will in fact have an operation on the internal meniscus of his right knee, a routine and not complicated operation, but which will dictate a recovery on the order of two months, definitely too long to think again in Gotti’s service, given that the championship will end on 23 May.
So it was therefore decided yesterday in Barcelona by Professor Joan Carles Monllau Garcia, who more precisely is not the reference specialist Udinese relies on, usually inclined to turn to Villa Stuart, where Professor Claudio Mariani practices, but the surgeon who operated on Deulofeu on 7 March 2020, when it was a question of reconstructing the cruciate ligament of the injured right knee on 29 February in the match between Watford and Liverpool. Since then, as is well known, the “ordeal” of the player who remained stationary for 237 days began, and who at the time, immediately after the operation, sent his heartfelt thanks to the Spanish specialist and his team. It is from Monllau, therefore, that Deulofeu wanted to return on Sunday, accompanied by the medical director of Udinese Fabio Tenore. The operation is scheduled between today and tomorrow, not before having completed all the necessary tests and examinations.
The use of surgery was unveiled by Deulofeu himself on Sunday evening on Instagram, with a post in which he also expressed frustration at the need to have an operation, after all the attempts made “from resting without drugs, to infiltrations, convinced that it would have worked, but unfortunately it didn’t ”, and after the words expressed following what at first seemed to be a compromising injury, which later revealed itself to be the cause of this new operation. And here you have to browse the calendar backwards to go to February 17, the day in which the Catalan put his foot badly in training, planting it on the ground and suffering a distortion-contusive trauma, during a match. Just three days had passed since the 3-0 defeat in Rome, where the Catalan had first eaten two goals in front of Pau Lopez and then had also expressed all his energy on the microphones, speaking as a player who at that moment felt in full confidence after the good performances in La Spezia, where he obtained the penalty of victory, and with Verona at home, a match in which he created four chances, even scoring the final 2-0 goal. “I got a little scare with my right knee during a workout. Fortunately it is nothing serious and I am sure to see you again very soon », he wrote then, on the eve of the away match on 21 February in Parma.
Too bad it did not go this way, with the next two months of absence that weighed heavily above all on the choices of a Gotti who, already in the absence of Pussetto (rupture of the crusader on January 3), could have benefited from that one against one, in attack, which the Spaniard could have guaranteed and which had already failed for a month, from 24 December to 20 January, due to bone edema in his right foot, remedied with Benevento. The future is now all to be written, with Villareal asking for information, and it is not certain that Deulofeu will remain in Udine despite the three-year contract signed up to 2024 with Udinese.
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