Dakar, Nov. 16 (BNA): A member of the Senegalese Football Federation Board of Directors said that Senegalese striker Sadio Mane will miss the “first matches” of his team in the World Cup due to a leg injury.
Abdoulaye Sow said Senegal will have to cope without their best player at the start of the tournament and “not complain too much”.
“We will have to count on playing the first matches without Sadio and winning without Sadio because we have 25 players apart from Sadio,” Sow said. “Nobody wanted that, but that’s what happened to us.”
Sow did not specify how many games Mane is expected to miss, and there has been no official word from Senegal or Bayern Munich, the Associated Press reports.
Mane was injured a week ago in a Bundesliga match between Bayern Munich and Werder Bremen. He was substituted in the 20th minute of Bayern’s 6-1 win. Bayern said the two-time African Footballer of the Year was injured in the head of the fibula bone in his lower right leg.
Most of the Senegal national team arrived in Qatar to participate in the World Cup on Sunday without Mane. The team’s first match is in Qatar against the Netherlands on Monday, but Mane was still awaiting further examinations by Bayern’s medical staff.
Senegal, the defending champions, will play Qatar four days after their match with the Netherlands. Their final Group A match will be against Ecuador on November 29.
Mane was named in Senegal’s 26-man squad last week by coach Aliou Cisse, who said at the time that Senegal hoped Mane would be ready to start the tournament.
But Bayern coach Julian Nagelsmann questioned Mane’s participation on Friday when he said that the player would be out of action for at least another 10 days, even before follow-up tests to determine the exact extent of the injury.
“It is clear that Senegal would like him to play,” said Nagelsmann. “But if he’s in pain, he can’t play. The medical stuff is more important than the sporting stuff. That’s the case with us as well as everyone else.”
Senegal won their first major African Cup trophy in February, when Mane scored the winning penalty in the shoot-out victory over Egypt in the final. Mane also scored the winning penalty in a play-off that decided Senegal’s place in Qatar.
Senegal is rated – along with Mane – by many as the best African team to ever participate in the World Cup finals.