World Cup XI of injury absentees, featuring Romario and Benzema, waits for Yamal | OneFootball

If Lamine Yamal does miss the World Cup finals through injury, he’ll have to fight David Beckham for the right-wing spot in this XI…

The Spanish media are currently fretting over Yamal’s hamstring injury. Though we don’t think they have yet reached the stage of printing ‘Beck Us Pray’ prayer mats as The Sun did in 2002. No doubt Uri Geller is standing by his phone just in case.

Beckham is one of a number of top stars to sit out a tournament due to injury. We’ve got a full team of them…

GK: Santiago Canizares

The Spain keeper, then 32, had just established himself as his country’s No.1 in time for the 2002 World Cup, for which he was preparing at their base in Jerez when he thought he’d freshen up.

Reaching for a bottle of aftershave, it dropped and smashed in the sink, sending glass flying, a shard slicing his foot and severing tendons. He immediately underwent surgery and was ruled out of the tournament.

Canizares took it a lot better than we might have: “I do not consider myself to be unlucky by any means. “From the start of my career I have had several strokes of good luck.”

RB: Gary Neville

The England defender also missed the 2002 tournament, also because of a foot injury – the dreaded metatarsal – but the culprit here was not a bottle of Blue Stratos, but Bayer Leverkusen’s Ze Roberto in a Champions League semi-final.

Instead of playing in Japan and South Korea, Neville tried his hand at punditry. And here we are.

LB: Dani Alves

The Brazilian is doing a job for us at left-back because his left peg is probably more trustworthy than the Neviller’s so across he goes.

Alves sat out the 2018 World Cup with a knee injury sustained in early May while playing for PSG in the Coupe de France victory over third-tier Les Herbiers. Then 35, Alves might have thought he was done with World Cups but he featured in Qatar, aged 39, to become the oldest ever player to represent Brazil at a finals.

CB: Daniel Passarella

Argentina’s World Cup-winning captain in 1978 travelled to Mexico for the 1986 tournament. What happened after he arrived is open to conjecture.

One version of events: the Argentina players were told not to drink the local water in Mexico, but Passarella assumed the warnings did not extend to the ice cubes in his whisky, which prompted a bad dose of diarrhoea.

He lost seven kilograms before returning to training for the third group game, but immediately sustained a leg muscle injury. He claimed he was forced to train before he was ready; the Argentina doc denied that, countering that Passarella had increased his workload without permission.

What we do know: Passarella didn’t play throughout the tournament – Diego Maradona lifted the World Cup – and never represented his country again.

CB: Rio Ferdinand

Ferdinand travelled to the 2010 World Cup but his tournament was over after the first training session in South Africa.

The England centre-back twisted his knee and damaged knee ligaments in a collision with Emile Heskey. Perhaps he got off lightly? Regardless, Michael Dawson was called up in his place and Ferdinand stuck around but witnessing the opening draw with USA was enough to prompt the United defender to fly home.

MF: Pep Guardiola

The Spain midfielder looked set to be recalled by Jose Antonio Camacho for the 2002 World Cup before a knee knack scuppered his hopes.

Guardiola was hurt during Brescia’s 5-0 battering at the hand of Juventus in April. For the then 31-year-old, it was doubly heartbreaking since he also missed France ’98 with a knee injury.

MF: Marco Reus

Reus suffered a similar double misfortune to Guardiola…

The Germany midfielder missed out on being a World Cup winner at the 2014 tournament after sustaining an ankle injury in the final friendly, a 6-1 win over Armenia, before Die Mannschaft flew to Brazil.

And Reus was absent in South Africa four years prior after being crocked in Borussia Mönchengladbach’s last game of the Bundesliga season.

RW: David Beckham

A broken metatarsal put Beckham at risk of missing the 2002 tournament, but prayers for the England star were answered when he was passed fit, even if he didn’t look it in Japan and South Korea.

There was no such divine intervention in 2010. Beckham recovered his England place under Fabio Capello and went on to become his country’s most-capped outfield player ahead of South Africa, where he was sure to feature, until a ruptured Achilles tendon in March while on loan at AC Milan, a move he made from LA Galaxy to ready himself for the World Cup.

He travelled with the squad anyway as the tournament’s most high-profile cheerleader.

LW: Sadio Mane

The Senegal star suffered a knee injury in Bayern Munich’s second-last game before the mid-season 2022 World Cup.

He underwent surgery and Senegal kept their talisman, who scored the decisive penalty in the shoot-out to get them to Qatar, on the squad list in the hope he might play later in the tournament, but there was never any realistic hope of Mane recovering in time.

CF: Romario

Brazil’s World Cup campaign in 1998 was bookended by fitness woes around their star strikers. Ronaldo was, to put it mildly, out of sorts for the final, while Romario had to admit defeat on the day of the squad submission deadline.

The then 32-year-old, a talisman in their 1994 triumph, travelled to France but was unable to train in the build-up due to a calf injury. Eventually, the decision was taken to omit him from the squad, prompting a tearful press conference from Romario before leaving the camp.

CF: Karim Benzema

In 2022, like Romario, Benzema was intent on going to the World Cup as a defending champion. The Ballon d’Or travelled to Qatar with Didier Deschamps’ squad but broke down in the build-up.

A thigh injury on the eve of the tournament was diagnosed as requiring three weeks to heal, so Benzema stepped aside. There was speculation he might return for the knockout stages, but he even declined an invite from president Emmanuel Macron to watch the final, preferring instead to smash his own TV when Randall Kolo Muani missed that chance. Probably.