If nothing prevents Gavi will miss the Eurocup and the Olympic Games. A play without apparent risk, in which he received a ball only after entering the field after recovering from a rival crash, has cut his season short. This Monday morning he will travel from Madrid to Barcelona, where the Barcelona Football Club doctors are waiting for him to confirm the worst possible diagnosis, the rupture of the cruciate ligament. which he himself suspected occurred after the damned play.
He injured himself
Gavi received the ball, tried to lower it with his chest and when he turned he put his knee wrong and… Gavi’s gestures on the field were eloquent. He covered his face with his hands and cried bitterly, knowing that he had just said goodbye to the season. The faces on the bench were no different. Sagnol came to console him, after realizing the importance of the injury, and De la Fuente came to encourage him before entering the tunnel. The Zorrilla stadium remained silent, overwhelmed by the harsh images that made the Barça player’s serious injury clear. It was the 23rd minute of the match between Spain and Georgia and nothing relevant happened in the first half.
When the teammates arrived at the locker room, the scenes that were experienced were very hard. “We have spoken with Gavi, he did not have to see the previous blow that he received. He went to step and when he was turning his knee went. I was broken, I didn’t understand what was happening. One thinks that we are invulnerable and life shows us that this is not the case. Life teaches you that you have to move forward. The locker room at half-time was a wake. We were all broken. Life has these things and when the good moments come we don’t value them,” De la Fuente confessed on the verge of tears in the press room.
The coach did not spare any qualifiers to describe what was experienced in the locker room at half-time due to Gavi’s injury: “I told the players that they had to recover, because even with a broken heart they had to move forward in the game, that we had to continue working because of its importance and because we had to do it in tribute to the fallen comrade. I didn’t even talk about tactics. The priority at that moment was to emotionally recover Gavi. “It was difficult even for me to explain to them what was happening.”
By car to Madrid and by plane to Barcelona
During the second half, very significant things happened. First came a message from the communications area that read: “Gavi information. Major injury to his right knee. “Pending tests to know the real extent of the injury.”. Minutes later Ferran Torres scored the second goal for Spain and in the celebration he took out a shirt with the name of Gavi in honor of his teammate who had been injured minutes before. An unprecedented event in football. Without the diagnosis having yet been confirmed, his teammates already assumed the severity of the injury and dedicated the goal to him. And minutes later another message arrived on the phone from the Federation: “Additional information about Gavi. The footballer will travel to Barcelona at the end of the match and there he will undergo the relevant tests to find out the extent of the injury to his right knee. He will be accompanied by Albert Luque, director of the national team.
The reality is that when the match ended, Albert Luque confirmed that the player had already left for Madrid in a car and that it would be this Monday morning when he would travel to Barcelona to confirm the extent of the injury with the Barça services. While the football director revealed that information, From the source I had a bad time in the press room: “It is the hardest moment, the most bitter victory of my career. I only think about taking care of the footballers. God grant that it is less than it seems. He just makes me uneasy and worried about that. We feel it in our souls and we are broken.” With glassy eyes and a taciturn tone, the coach retired to the same locker room that he described as a “wake.” That concern could also be seen on the face of a Le Normand very touched by the serious injury of his teammate in the mixed zone: “It is painful to see Gavi suffer.” And Ferran ended up putting the epilogue with an unflattering prognosis: “We leave with a bittersweet taste and without good feelings due to Gavi’s injury. I send you lots of encouragement and a lot of strength. We still don’t know the extent of the injury, but Knowing what a warrior he is and how he left the field, we believe it could be something serious.”. This Monday the serious injury of Gavín will be confirmed, whom De la Fuente described with a certain epic as “the fallen companion.”