Injury Update Coming Into Those France Euro Qualifiers

Ukraine on June 2, Georgia on June 6. These games are important. They count. It would be extremely nice if we had everybody healthy. Unfortunately…well…

Up front, Louis Saha is out again, this time with a knee injury. I think I read something about surgery? (Sad. This isn’t the way to cement his place at ManU with Sir Alex already upset about his inability to stay fit.)

Striker Thierry Henry is also still out for Arsenal with the stomach and groin injuries he picked up in the Champions League game against PSV Eindhoven. When he first became injured, Arsenal Manager Arsene Wenger very clearly said that Henry was out until next season for BOTH club and international games. I picked up some question marks on the part of Raymond Domenech at the time about whether or not this would be the case, but I’m not seeing anything to indicate that Henry wants to play. He seems extremely focused on getting healed so he can play a strong, full season next year. On the other hand, though, it has to be killing him to be this close to the Platini record and unable to work to break it. I’m still not going to say I’m 100% certain he won’t be there until I see that he’s not on the callup list.

Willie Sagnol is another with a longterm injury, this one his knee. I think they were saying three to four months back in April, which means there’s no chance he’ll be back in time for these games. I’m having a hard time imagining Euro qualifiers without Sagnol. What do you think? Francois Clerc impressed me in the Austria game, but that was a friendly. Will this be his chance to prove he can play with the big boys?

And Patrick Vieira is apparently injured again, after finally coming back from a hamstring injury that kept him out of the March games. He seems to have picked up a knee injury in the Coppa Italia game against AS Roma. I’m not finding a lot of details, but it looks like the injury may be bad enough to keep him from playing in June. I’ll keep looking and let you know.

There may be others, but that’s all I’m aware of at the moment. So cross your fingers and let’s hope that we see NO more injury reports in the next few weeks!