African champions Senegal will have to do without their superstar Sadio Mané at the World Cup in Qatar. The FC Bayern Munich striker will be out for the tournament, which begins on November 20, due to an injury to the head of his right fibula, the Senegalese association announced in Doha.
Until the end, the team had hoped that Mané could possibly enter the World Cup at a later date. But nothing came of it. “Unfortunately, today’s MRI has shown us that things are not going as well as we had imagined. We have therefore decided to declare Sadio’s withdrawal from the World Cup,” team doctor Manuel Afonso was quoted as saying on the Senegalese Twitter account. According to information from “Bild” on Thursday, Mané is now being operated on in Innsbruck.
Mané was injured in Bayern’s 6-1 Bundesliga win over Werder Bremen on November 8, but was still included in his home country’s World Cup squad. Africa’s Footballer of the Year is his country’s most important player. In Group A, Senegal meet the Netherlands on 21 November, followed by hosts Qatar and Ecuador as opponents.
