Manchester United and their fans received quite a scare yesterday when they learned Fred, the midfielder that was just acquired earlier this week for £52 million, suffered an injury during training with Brazil.
Fred suffered an ankle injury while working out with the national team at Tottenham Hotspur’s training ground, and the result had everybody in the United community on pins and needles. Luckily, the situation isn’t as serious and dire as had been initially feared. At least according to teammate Marcelo, and Team doctor Rodrigo Lasmar.
Further tests will be conducted today, and the diagnosis is far from definitive, but early assessment is encouraging.
“If tomorrow he continues in pain and some signal makes us more alert, we may need an imaging examination, but there is no strategy whether it will be here or in Austria. Tomorrow we will have a clearer possibility,” said Lamar.
“He has had an ankle trauma, but it is still too early for any evaluation, he has already begun the recovery work, he had that part in real pain. It’s early for any diagnosis, we need to wait for more.
“The first 24 hours are crucial, tomorrow we will see how he will feel, the response to treatment, whether he will train or not.”
While Brazil’s doctor is taking more of a wait and see approach, Marcelo seems pretty confident that Fred isn’t dealing with a serious problem.
“This is the World Cup. Everybody’s training hard, working hard and there are these moments in training,” said Marcelo.
“But I believe it’s not that serious, I believe it’s not a big problem for us and I think he’ll be back with us as soon as possible.”
Brazil will have their final World Cup tune-up Sunday against Austria, and one week later they will open the tournament with a group stage game against Switzerland.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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