Ex-Arsenal Striker Discusses William Saliba’s Injury Impact on Team
Get French Football News sat down with former Arsenal and France youth international striker Jérémie Aliadière to look back on les Bleus‘ World Cup semi-final defeat and to discuss the future of the France team and its players.
In this third part, he discussed William Saliba’s injury and the potential repercussions for Arsenal.
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You talked about the small details during the semi-final. One of those is connected with Arsenal and that is William Saliba’s injury. We knew that he had back pain and it finally gave out on him during the match. It makes me think of a Samuel Umtiti playing through a knee injury in 2018 and never fully recovering. Do you worry about him in the long term and how can it have consequences for Arsenal this season too?
As soon as I saw him go off and saw what he said – you’re in the semi-finals of the World Cup, you don’t go off with injury if it’s just a minor thing. I played in matches that were far from a World Cup semi-final but were important matches in my eyes and so I played with muscle tears, with things like this. So when you go off like that, saying “it’s over, my back’s dead”, it’s very, very worrying.
And I read this morning that Arsenal are saying that he is going to need surgery, that he’ll be out for four to five months. So that’s a big blow for Arsenal as we’re probably not going to see him before January now. That’s a long time when we know how important he is to Arsenal alongside Gabriel.
And you worry a bit as there are a lot of Arsenal players who played in this World Cup and, turning to the start of the league season, you start thinking hanging on are we going to be able to put out? Because all these players who have played in the World Cup, who have made it to the quarter-finals, semi-finals, they will not be physically ready for the beginning of the league. So you say to yourself, what team are we going to be able to play with for the first four, five matches if the season? Are we going to be able to be competitive and get the season off to a good start? Because we know very well that in the Premier League you can’t make a slow start. If you’re 10 points behind after 20 games, it’s going to be very difficult.
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So yes, it’s worrying for Arsenal and I’m especially disappointed for him because when you’re in the semi-finals of the World Cup, when you’ve had a season like he had with Arsenal and the French team, it’s disappointing for it to end like that. But as you said, we’ve known for a while that he had back problems and even with Arsenal last season they had to manage him well so that he could play as many games as possible. But there were moments when he was playing with pain and it is a shame that it has got to this level, but I hope that if he has to have an operation, he’ll take all the time that he needs and that he comes back in great shape.
Jérémie Aliadière was speaking exclusively to Get French Football News courtesy of BetVictor Online Casino