The 27-year-old was found to have free joint bodies in the right ankle joint. "He’s not doing well," sports executive matthias sammer says. According to bavaria, the duration of the failure is not yet foreseeable. "This is quite bitter for us," said captain philipp lahm.
Gomez had to be replaced early because of the problems already on saturday in the test against werder bremen at the short tournament "liga total cup" in hamburg. Gomez’s absence three weeks before the start of the bundesliga makes the record champion’s injury list even longer. Rafinha (torn ligament in ankle) and david alaba (fatigue fracture in fub) have already been absent for weeks. Jungst injured in diego contento (haarriss im fub) also a third aubenverteidiger.
Franck ribery (bursitis in the heel) and newcomer claudio pizarro (hoof problems) are also unfit. In addition, midfielder bastian schweinsteiger is already injured again, he was substituted after 20 minutes in the 1:0 for third place against the HSV. An exact diagnosis is still pending. "He bent over a little bit. But it’s probably not that bad, maybe a ligament strain," said heynckes. "It is very bitter that some players have been injured now. That’s bad, of course," he said.
With the injury of gomez, the days-long discussion about his performance has come to an end for the time being. Bayern president hoeneb’s vociferous criticism of the attacker had caused confusion not only among observers but also within the club itself. Already on saturday, sammer and heynckes had irritably responded to the words of the powerful munich alpha dog. "We will not allow mario to be publicly criticized," sammer told the TV station sat.1.
Hoeneb has "all the rights," but "we didn’t really like it," the new sports director said on the sidelines of the "liga total cup," in which bayern lost to bremen in the semifinals on penalty kicks. Even more than the premature end there, heynckes and sammer were annoyed by the unnecessary gomez discussion during the bundesliga break. With his sentence "I can’t forbid the president to say anything," heynckes indicated how out of place he felt hoeneb’s statements were.
The latter had criticized that gomez was "good, but not very good. If he was very good, we would have won the champions league". Later he added that he wanted to incite the attacker with his brash statement. "In the past, you could motivate a player again with something like that, but that’s over now," heynckes commented.
Sammer called for a more unified performance. "If we want to take the step from good to very good, we have to look for that in the entire association," he said on saturday and affirmed: "we all have to work together unitedly towards auben." Also lahm underlined that the words of hoeneb hurt: "it would be bad if it did not hit you. But the president has all the rights, even if that is not already for us players."The important thing is that the issue does not play a role within the team.
Shortly before the start of the bundesliga, not everything is running smoothly for the bavarians, as was also evident in hamburg. Although heynckes played down the significance of the short tournament and the defeat in the semifinals, the trouble surrounding gomez and the many trips are giving him a hard time – the injured list adds to the problem. "The players have to come to strength, something that is very difficult at FC bayern with the many appointments and the trip to china," the coach emphasized.
Even the brief first appearance of the long-suffering schweinsteiger after the german national team was eliminated from the european championships was unfortunate. Unaccustomedly hard against werder’s mehmet ekici. "He came one step too late, that’s a lack of playing practice," heynckes said, "he’s no foul player, for god’s sake." And now schweinsteiger is also banged up again, wordlessly limping onto the bus on sunday.