Arsenal defender Riccardo Calafiori could miss as much as ten weeks if his injury is a serious one, according to a football injury expert.
The Gunners beat Shakhtar Donetsk 1-0 in their latest Champions League group stage match with Gabriel Martinelli’s first-half effort rebounding in off goalkeeper Dmytro Riznyk.
With captain Martin Odegaard sidelined, and William Saliba and Bukayo Saka both set to be out for the visit of Liverpool through suspension and injury respectively, Calafiori added to Mikel Arteta’s woes after he was withdrawn in the second half.
Arsenal defender Calafiori appeared to twist his knee in a collision with Eguinaldo and although he attempted to carry on, he was withdrawn six minutes later.
Ben White, who only returned from injury in the defeat at Bournemouth following a near-month lay-off, was substituted at half-time. However, Arteta revealed that was a precaution with the defender already on a yellow card.
Arteta said: “With Ben, it was my decision to take him out. He had a yellow card and we’ve played enough with 10 men in recent periods.
“They had a lot of players on that side, so I didn’t want to take any chances there.
“With Riccardo, he had to come off because he felt something. I don’t know the extent of it so in that sense that’s not great news.”
And now football injury expert Physio Scout claims that Calafiori is likely to have suffered a medial collateral ligament and not an anterior cruciate ligament injury – but could still miss ten weeks depending on the severity.
Physio Scout wrote on X: “Riccardo Calafiori went off in the second half for Arsenal with a knee injury. Non-contact injury here which forces knee into valgus, but more of a slide injury rather than a direction change + pivot action. This would be more indicative of an MCL injury, rather than an ACL injury.
“But integrity of the ACL still a MINOR concern. Physio was seen performing a valgus stress test too – which tests the structure of the MCL. Scans are necessary, but let’s hope it’s only a minor/moderate MCL sprain.
“Potential Recovery Times: Grade 1: 1-2 weeks Grade 2: 3-6 weeks Grade 3: 6-10 weeks. Again, scans will be necessary to confirm the severity. But hope is that it’s only a grade 1 or 2 here as he got back up and played on.”
On their general performance against Shakhtar, Arteta said after the match: “In this format, to win the home matches is going to be super important to get the objectives that we want. We started the game really well; I think in the first half we were really dominant; we created various chances – four I recall – big chances that we had to put the ball in the back of the net, we didn’t and that gave them a bit of hope.
“In the second half, we started pretty well and then we started to give a little bit back. I think physically and mentally what we went through two-and-a-half days ago paid but it was important and then we didn’t have that clarity, that purpose, we gave some balls away and we didn’t have the same rhythm as we did in the first half.
“And credit to Shakhtar, they are a good side and in spaces can create you problems. Then we had the moment to put the game to bed with the penalty, we didn’t again, we gave them more hope and for us it was a moment to dig back in and manage to end the game and get the result at the end which we’re really happy with.”
