Claudio Reyna was injured during Manchester City's English Premiership defeat to Wigan Athletic by 4-3 and had to be substituted in the 65th minute of the game. The news dealt a blow to USA coach Bruce Arena's World Cup preparation plans.

Bruce Arena planned to use the players playing in European Leagues in two important international friendly fixtures, with the first match against Poland on the 1st of March and the second against Germany. Both matches are to be held in Germany.

Reyna has been playing with ankle injury for the past couple of months, as Manchester City's medical team did not realise the exact extent of his injury. It was revealed two days ago at a press conference after Man City's loss to Chelsea by 1-0.

According to the team's medical team, the 32-years old midfielder fractured a small bone in the back of his ankle. The severity of the injury could only be diagnosed after the player went through a specialised X-Ray scan.

Claudio Reyna has been suffering from many injuries this season. The player gave an interview at the Club's official website and spoke about his injury problem.

"The original injury happened in the Arsenal game. It has been really sore and it didn't feel right. I could not train through the week and I was just trying to get through games."

"An X-Ray scan revealed there's a break and now I'll proceed with having surgery on Friday. Luckily, the doctor is one of the leading guys in Europe and I'm happy to be seeing him and getting the problem cleared up," Reyna said.

He is expected to return to action at the end of February, although his continuous injury problems this season suggest that it might take longer for him to recover.

"Within 6-8 weeks, I'll be completely back, up and running and, three weeks after the surgery, I should be jogging and building it up until I'm back, which shouldn't be too bad."

"It's disappointing and there's never a good time for it. It's a player's worst nightmare, really. You just want to be playing and want to stay fit, so hopefully it heals well and everything goes to plan," Reyna said.

The United States team will play another three international friendlies in the US but seems highly unlikely that all the players can make it. In Britain, the English Football Association (FA) agreed to re-arrange fixtures at the English Premiership, so that the national football team's coach Sven-Goran Eriksson can have a full 4-week training camp with all his players in May.

The move was also backed by FIFA, the World Soccer governing body, in order to give players more time to relax and adapt to their national team. This might make Reyna available in Bruce Arena's squad.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

delicious | digg | google | yahoo | technorati