Manuel Neuer was particularly sure that he would continue. A week ago, the captain of the national team, 36, was one of those players who were asked about a possible career end at the DFB after the German preliminary round at the World Cup. He dismissed this notion far and wide. There’s nothing wrong with staying in goal as long as he’s invited and shows performance, he said.
The next statement from the FC Bayern goalkeeper after trying to explain the poor performance of the national team in Qatar was about the fact that he will not be in goal for the time being. Neuer posted a picture of himself in the hospital bed, a thumbs up, his right leg in a cast. “While trying to clear my head while ski touring, I broke my lower leg,” he wrote. An operation went well, he thanks the doctors. “However, it hurts to know that the current season is over for me.”
Neuer will therefore miss the first international matches, with which national coach Hansi Flick begins preparing for the 2024 European Championship in his own country. And FC Bayern will miss him in the important, decisive games in the Bundesliga and the Champions League. “The news of Manuel’s injury shocked us all. We will stand by him and accompany him on his way to his comeback,” said CEO Oliver Kahn: “He will also overcome this serious injury and return to the pitch as strong as before .”
Kahn will be more concerned about the remaining World Cup games
Kahn is in Qatar at the moment, a meeting of the European club association ECA is taking place in Doha. He also watched the quarterfinals between Brazil and Croatia on Friday. At least now, however, one can imagine that he is more concerned about the remaining games, in which a few Bayern professionals are also involved.
In the first week of the tournament, defender Lucas Hernández was seriously injured in the French national team’s opening game and is out with a torn cruciate ligament. In between, Kingsley Coman and Moroccan Bayern international Noussair Mazraoui were also injured. And then, of course, there are the many German internationals who didn’t necessarily do well with the World Cup. Neuer’s injury completes a couple of rather unfortunate weeks for the record champions.
It is not the first serious injury for the goalkeeper, before the 2018 World Cup he had been absent for a long time due to two metatarsal fractures. Before the 2022 World Cup, he was out with a shoulder injury and got fit just in time. But there were quite a few who thought they could still see a few consequences of his game. He had 12 shots on target in three group games against Japan, Spain and Costa Rica – five were in and he didn’t look particularly good in three.
In Munich, before the World Cup, Neuer was mostly adequately replaced seven times by substitute Sven Ulreich. The 34-year-old’s contract was then extended by a further year until 2024 at the beginning of November. “FC Bayern know that I’m always there when you need me,” Ulreich said. But he probably wouldn’t have thought that it would be the case again so soon, for example in the Champions League round of 16 against Paris Saint-Germain.