Athletic Club dealt heavy blow on the injury front | OneFootball

La Liga outfit Athletic Club have on Tuesday been dealt an altogether considerable blow on the personnel front.

This comes amid confirmation that a key member of the club’s first-team ranks is set to be unavailable for selection for the foreseeable future.

The player in question? Unai Simón.

Goalkeeper Simón, for his part, is of course fresh off playing a central role in the Spanish national team marching all the way to glory at Euro 2024.

The 27-year-old featured from the off in all but one of La Roja’s outings at the tournament, again proving his credentials as one of football’s very best between the posts.

Such exploits, however, actually came with Simón nursing a wrist injury.

Upon his return to base in Blibao this week, the shot-stopper was therefore swiftly forced under the knife, to deal with a case of ‘scaphoid-lunate instability’.

Speaking during a public appearance (as cited by Mundo Deportivo) on Tuesday, Josean Lekue, head of Athletic Club’s medical services, provided the latest on Simón’s wellbeing:

“It is an injury that has been developing for months and whose identification and progression we have been looking at during the season. We do not usually enter the period of injury absence, but it is a development that has been taking place for months.”

Pressed further on the recovery timeline facing Los Leones’ no.1, Lekue continued:

“I cannot specify because it is not a matter that depends only on us, it also depends on the surgical procedure itself. All surgeons know what they are going to do in all operations, but in almost all of them they introduce nuances of what the surgical procedure itself may advise. We are in a sufficiently wide range not to specify more than a period of months.”

Conor Laird | GSFN