Sunday 26th May 2002
France midfielder Zinedine Zidane limped out of Sunday’s victory over South Korea with a thigh tear and is doubtful for the World Cup opener against Senegal.
“As of this evening, there are only 22 players in my squad and the team is weaker,” admitted coach Roger Lemerre. "We must wait for the doctor’s diagnosis, but Zidane had a small sensation of a rupture in his left thigh.
“We think that some muscle fibres may have been damaged and, when it is a muscle, we are always very worried because we don’t know how long it will take to recover.”
Zidane goes for a scan in Seoul on Monday which should reveal the full extent of the problem, but preliminary tests suggested a small tear in his left thigh.
“He immediately left the pitch and the test revealed a small tear of the median third of the quadriceps,” said France doctor Jean-Marcel Ferret.
“The clinical results and analysis of the complementary examinations will allow an evaluation of the duration of unavailability.”
Zidane, a two-goal hero of the 1998 World Cup final, hobbled off the pitch in the 38th minute of France’s 3-2 win over Korea and sat on the bench holding an ice-pack to his left thigh.
He missed the 2-1 defeat to Belgium last weekend as he was with his wife for the birth of their third child and only arrived at the team’s Japanese training camp late last week.
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