The bad omen of Gavi's tears: he suffers a "major injury" and there are fears for the cruciate injury in his right knee

A minute that froze Spain. Gavi fell, run over by the Georgian Luka Lochoshvili, who left a blow on his right knee, but the Sevillian, treated for a few moments, returned to the game with the impetus that accompanies his game.. The next play was followed by a fade to black. He again fearlessly looked for a long ball from Carvajal, although it came from offside, but before touching it, his right knee failed him.. The whiplash of pain was reflected on his face. I wanted to walk, but I could barely limp. Impossible to continue and not think about the cruciate ligament. He asked for a substitution in the 25th minute and put his hands to his face before bursting into tears on the way to the locker room.. It was the worst omen.

“Knowing what a warrior Gavi is and seeing how he left the field, we believe it could be something serious,” acknowledged his friend Ferran Torres, who dedicated his goal to him.. According to official information from the Federation, Gavi suffers “a significant injury to his right knee”, the real extent of which is pending the tests that will be carried out in the next few hours.. However, in the federation environment, after the first examinations, it was feared that the cruciate ligament may have been torn. The RFEF confirmed that the footballer would travel to Barcelona urgently at the end of the match and that the director of the national team, Albert Luque, would accompany him.

De la Fuente could not be more sincere on the verge of tears. “It is the most bitter victory I have ever experienced in my life. The hardest, most bitter day of my career. It seemed like we had lost. We are destroyed,” he said. “At half-time the locker room looked like a wake. The boy was broken, destroyed. I couldn't assume that that could happen to him,” he warned.

His message to the group had to be simple and far from football. “Even for me it was difficult to explain the seriousness of what had happened.”. But we had to move forward with the game in tribute to our fallen teammate.. We had to emotionally recover the footballers,” he revealed..

The blow to the locker room, how they saw Gavi destroyed in the minutes of rest, became evident in the second half, when Ferran Torres scored and showed the shirt with the number 9 of his injured teammate in celebration.. A tribute as a prolegomena to an absence that will be long.

The message served to beat Georgia but no one got the Sevillian out of their heads. “We are praying that it is not so serious and we can have Gavi with us soon,” Gayá confessed at the end of a match in which Spain did not celebrate having achieved an almost perfect classification. «We couldn't do it because it has been a very hard blow for everyone. Now we just hope that he recovers as soon as possible,” asked Le Normand, who scored his first goal for Spain but will have bittersweet memories of this match.

The injury overshadowed the outstanding “almost a honorary degree” that the coach gave to his players nor the “brilliant” classification.. He didn't even have the body to talk about a renovation that will have to close before the Euro. “When there are two parties that want to understand each other, they understand each other.”. And I am happy in the national team,” he simply said.. It wasn't night for that.

An essential player

Gavi had the cross of a football that he always had in mind. He broke precocity records with his debut on October 6, 2021 in the Nations League semifinals against Italy. He was 17 years and 62 days old and coach Luis Enrique blindly trusted his football and his self-confidence.. Since then, 28 international matches and five goals.

Essential for FC Barcelona, even more so after Pedri's injuries, it is also essential for Luis de la Fuente's Spain. Of the 23 games he could play this season, he has played 21. Of them, 15 have been with Barça, with whom he has only lost two, and in nine he has played 90 minutes.

Since the Rioja coach sits on the bench, Gavi is, along with Rodri, the only player he has only given up in one game. He has started in all the qualifying matches for the German Euro Cup except in that experiment against Scotland in Hampden Park and was in the eleven of the two Nations League matches against Italy and Croatia. Only the Manchester City midfielder can boast similar confidence, even though his break was a few days ago in Cyprus.

“It was an accident. Gavi was perfect. He came to this window after having rested for cards. And he always wants to train and play. He is gifted. The idea was not that he would play 90 minutes, but that no longer matters,” said the coach who sent a message to FC Barcelona: “We are very sorry, in our souls.”

Nobody remembered that Spain, with this victory, finished this classification as first in the group and will start in the seeding pot in the draw on December 2 in Hamburg that will match the 24 teams qualified for the Euro Cup.