A Tale of Two World Cup Fortunes

June 8th, 2006 | by: WC Bob |

While fans in England were rejoicing at the news that Wayne Rooney will be available to play in the World Cup on Wednesday, fans in France were grimacing at the sight of Djibril Cisse being carried off the pitch after having his leg snapped in a friendly against China. Cisse will miss the World Cup. How devastating it must be to be right on the doorstep of playing in the ultimate football event only to have the door close at the last minute.

Meanwhile the saga that has been known as Wayne Rooney’s metatarsal has finally come to an end. The England striker has a good chance of being fit if his team advances out of the group stages. With all the attention that has been paid to Rooney’s foot, let’s hope he actually uses it to bring some delight to both his country’s fans and neutral observers.

Mexico faces its own uncertainty with the news that keeper Oswaldo Sanchez’s father passed away after suffering a heart attack. Sanchez has flown home to attend the funeral and will miss the team’s game against Iran on Sunday. Mexico is expected to announce today whether it will call up a replacement for Sanchez, who is one of the tournament’s better keepers.

The host nation is waiting on pins and needles to see how long it will take for captain Michael Ballack to recover from a nagging calf injury. The injury isn’t serious but it is bad enough to keep him out the first game against Costa Rica. With a German team that lacks experience, not having a world-class veteran player like Ballack on the field to settle those first game jitters may be a big issue.

Finally, Tunisia has replaced the injured Issam Jomaa with Chouki Ben Saada on its World Cup roster.

With each player injury we all suffer a World Cup blow because we miss out on seeing the world’s best. Let’s hope that these are the last injury stories we hear for a few weeks.

Here’s the Cisse play if you haven’t seen it.

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http://www.worldcupblog.org/world-cup-2006/big-question-which-current-coach-was-the-best-player.html#comments Pedro P

Read that the guy’s right leg was kinda “bend”, so serious the fracture was…
matilda

The challenge wasn’t really reckless – he just fell at an awkward angle and the leg completely snapped. This is the second time Cisse’s broken his leg but luckily, it’s not the same one as last time. That would probably have killed his career for good. France must be seriously distraught. It was horrible to watch – I flinched.
fritz

Never have liked Cisse very much but it is terrible to see him go out this close to the World Cup. That challenge by the Chinese player was really uncalled for.
sooz

Comments from Zheng:

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/sports/2006-06/08/content_611974.htm
Rolf

Agreed. It wasn’t a reckless challenge just an awkward break for a player whose legs seem to be made of wood.
Vin

Yeah… not really reckless. At first, I was like “Those damn Chinese! Don’t they know what a friendly is,” and then I saw that this was just a freak accident. I’ll bet the Chinese guy feels bad.
zé

Jesus, that’s pretty painful to watch. It doesn’t however look like the charge was anything out of the ordinary though, so I guess the Chinese guy is feeling pretty bad.

Worse for Cisse and for France though. They didn’t need that right now. :/

As for Rooney, will he actually be fit? It’s not easy to get back from an injury… he’ll probably get to play, but just in the second half and stuff like that. Which’s a shame too, I wanted to see all national teams at their best.
http://www.klinsmann.de/ Tom

Often I don’t appreciate the level of journalism on worldcupblog; but in this case, great caption.

Poor Djebril; condolences; may the French rebound from this setback or as L’Equipe quipped “catastrophe.”
Altintop

I feel sorry for Cisse, right before the start of the tournament. I bet missing the world cup will hurt more than breaking the leg. Now he broke the second leg in the same maner as the first one, I hope for his own sake that clubs will not be signing him anymore and this would the end for him. Once more this won’t be the case and that we will see Cisse soon at club level that is; to be honest he wasn’t much of an international player.
Ekul

Poor Cissé! Being a huge Liverpool supporter I really feel sorry for him, having both his legs broken now (Left leg at Ewood Park after a nasty tumble, and now another tumble broke his right leg.) Poor guy, well, that’s apparently what £14,000,000 is, an injury hit striker who isn’t the best, but should be with his pace and price, but he just isn’t as consistant for Liverpool or France as he was for Auxerre.