Osimhen
Breaking: Napoli’s Nigerian striker Osimhen misses AFCON 2022
Napoli and Nigerian Super Eagles forward Victor Osimhen has been ruled out of the African Nations Cup football tournament scheduled for Jan. 2022 due to injury.
Osimhen is set to be on the sideline for the next three months following the injury he suffered last weekend in a Serie A game.
The sensational striker is confirmed to have undergone a surgery on his cheekbone and injured his eye socket during the match.
Surgeon Gianpaolo Tartaro revealed that Osimhen got his face badly crushed and that the surgery on the face was successful.
Tartaro said the injury was not a simple cheekbone fracture but that it also affected several bones of the player’s face.
Osimhen sustained the injury during Napoli’s 3-2 loss to Inter Milan at the Giuseppe Meaza last Sunday when he contested the ball with Milan’s Skriniar.
The Nigeria international walked off the pitch with a swollen cheekbone and black eye and was rushed to the hospital afterwards.
A surgery was performed on the face on Tuesday, according to a statement by Napoli, and a recovery time of three months was set by the club.
But Tartaro, one of the surgeons at the operation, said in an interview with 1 Station Radio, that the clash damaged Osimhen’s face badly and it was too early to talk about recovery time.
“Osimhen injury was not a simple cheekbone fracture but also affected several bones of the face,” said the doctor.
“It was not a shock trauma, but compression: the kinetic force generated by the crushing of Osimhen’s face against Skriniar’s created devastating damage.
“It is still too early to talk about recovery times because the surgery was really complex: the conditions of the player’s face were very bad but I guarantee that the surgery was perfectly successful,” he added.
Osimhen is already ruled out of participating at next year’s Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) which is billed to begin on 9 January in Cameroon.
