Van Ginkel's unfortunate event series continues with the latest end-of-season surgery

As announced yesterday by Chelsea, the intervention of Marco van Ginkel to repair and "reconstruct" his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) has been successful. The 25-year-old also had a cartilage repair in the knee ("chondral damage"). That's the good news.

The bad news is that recovery should take "about eight months", but as we have seen with other ACL injuries, it could very well take longer. Anyway, Van Ginkel's season is over even before it's started.

It's still a huge setback for a career dominated by injuries since his arrival at Chelsea in 2013.

Wulfert Cornelius van Ginkel, 20 years old at the time, was there. one of the very first signatories of the second era of José Mourinho (for a paltry 9 M €) and the young Dutch player of the year (and still the only player to pbad from Chelsea Speed, rather than d & # 39; habit) seemed destined for great things. But at one month of the season, at his fourth appearance and second start, he broke his ACL, and things will never be the same again.

In five years, Van Ginkel has managed barely 100 appearances on five different loans. movements (a third of these appearances come just in the last twelve months), while collecting several other knee injuries, some minor, some severe, some repairable, some harbading. It was expected that he will join the PSV this summer, either on loan, or permanently after having directed them (!) Towards an Eredivisie title last season, but this n & # 39; This is obviously not the case now. That this injury is on the heels of the best season of his career (both in terms of regular fitness and purpose), is particularly cruel and tragic.

There had been a hope that MvG could prove himself to Chelsea this pre-season (provided he still wanted to try), but now, instead, it's time to persevere once again .

All the best and a speedy recovery, Marco!