Arsenal defender, Laurent Koscielny, will be out for six months after undergoing surgery on a ruptured Achilles.
Gunners boss Arsene Wenger described the 32-year-old as “devastated” when confirming that an operation is necessary to cure an injury sustained in last Thursday’s Europa League semi-final exit at Atletico Madrid.
It is understood the procedure was scheduled to take place on Tuesday. Koscielny will miss the World Cup with France but has a chance of resurrecting his Arsenal career under Wenger’s successor given his present contract runs until 2020.
“Koscielny is, of course, devastated because he has surgery,” said Wenger. “That means he will be out for six months. You will not see him before the end of December, or maybe the beginning of December at best. It’s certainly the final year he would play for the national team, but you never know.
“We always try to be positive. Overall, you can only try to support people when they suffer because of course, they suffer from a situation like that. What is unusual in his case is that he had a tendon issue for a long time and usually they don’t rupture. That is a bit surprising in this case, where people with inflamed tendons don’t rupture, but in his case, it went. I don’t know why.”
“The recovery will be full because the advantage of the surgery is that it heals the inflammation, which people don’t do usually because of the fact you move always.
“Sometimes people have surgery when they don’t need it and they think, ‘oh it has healed’ and it has healed basically because they didn’t move. On that front, it is no problem [for Koscileny], he will cure.”
