Sports writing (EFE) recovery of three to four months.
The decision, according to the club, was made after the footballer suffered a new sprain on February 20, after which the medical staff recommended that he undergo surgery to avoid a recurrence of his injuries.
With the intervention that is going to be carried out at the ASPETAR hospital in Doha, Neymar tries to envision a new horizon in which the part of the body that has caused him the most setbacks throughout his career can better support the load of matches and contact with rivals.
The most recent of these injuries occurred as a result of a spectacular sprain during a league match against Lille that forced him to leave the field on a stretcher. But it is enough to go back to the month of November to find a similar situation.
Neymar’s ankle already gave problems in the World Cup
The scenario, on that occasion, was more mediatic since Neymar had to withdraw from the opening match of the group stage of the final phase of the World Cup against Serbia. Then he was diagnosed with a lateral ligament injury in his right ankle with a small bone edema that caused him to miss the two immediately following games against Switzerland and Cameroon.
Before that setback, the former Barcelona player had been out for up to 358 days due to injuries to both ankles. In total, 14 different ones throughout his career; the previous one on November 28, 2021, when he was out of it for two and a half months and missed twelve games with his team.
He also suffered a sprain from December 13, 2020 to January 12, 2021; another month out of competition. He spent three months in total in the summer of 2019, also due to a sprain, an injury that he suffered after being away for four months, between January and April, due to another sprain in that area.
Since 2013, when he landed at Barcelona, a large percentage of his injuries have come from the ankle, and he has rarely been out for less than a week.
Assuming his long period of absence and with the subsequent summer break, Neymar will now not have the rush to return that constant competition demands. So he leaves, momentarily, having played a total of 29 official matches this season with the Parisian squad in which he scored 18 goals.