Manchester City midfield maven Kevin De Bruyne will have to wait about three months to commence his 2018-19 Premier League season. The Belgian superstar suffered ligament damage in his right knee during a training session on Wednesday, and a club statement confirmed that he suffered a “lateral collateral ligament (LCL) lesion in his right knee.”
The bad news is that he’ll be out for three months, and that could certainly be a game changer in regards to the Premier League title race. The good news is his injury recovery process won’t require surgery.
City manager Pep Guardiola blames the injury to KDB on an excessive workload. Man City’s player of the year last season and the PFA Player of the Year runner-up had a fantastic World Cup, helping lead Belgium to a historical third place finish.
“Sometimes it is normal – the players don’t rest, they come back and have a short recovery and we say ‘come on, let’s go’ – sometimes human beings have a limit,” Guardiola said at his weekly news conference today.
“We demand a lot of the players. More than 11 months and after immediately they come back. I am pretty sure this has an influence. When you are fresh here (in your head) and in your legs, this kind of thing doesn’t happen.”
What is encouraging for KDB, Pep Guardiola and the rest of the Manchester City community is that this isn’t anything they haven’t been through before.
De Bruyne missed nine weeks of the 2015-16 season due to a knee ligament injury, and obviously came back stronger than ever from that, so given how he’s still in his physical prime, there is no reason to believe he won’t do so again.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, is currently a regular contributor to SB Nation, WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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