Alone, collapsed, lying face down on the lawn of the Parc des Princes, Renato Sanches remained crying for long seconds on Saturday evening. From the 11th minute of the match against Toulouse (2-1), on a simple pass, the Portuguese midfielder of PSG was struck down, as too often, by pain behind the left thigh. “He is suffering from a muscle injury and normally it is an absence of a few weeks, which involves a lot of matches at the moment”, summed up Christophe Galtier after the meeting about his midfielder recruited last summer.
This Sunday, PSG had not yet communicated on the length of unavailability of the former Lille, champion of France in 2021. But Renato Sanches will resume a path he knows by heart, that of the infirmary. This is already the fourth time this season. He has already missed ten games through injury this season. What largely contribute to maintain his reputation as a fragile player. Especially in the hamstrings.
At the start of 2018, he had missed three months of competition with Swansea. In Lille, between 2019 and 2022, he missed nearly forty games. In January 2021, his coach at LOSC, a certain Christophe Galtier, said: “Renato is a very serious player, who works well. He loves the game, training, competition, he has such a desire that he is impatient. And sometimes he gets angry. He tenses up. They say he hasn’t had a full season yet. Of course it undermines him. But he must relax to avoid being in tension, nervousness, which creates muscular incidents. It is not the accumulation of matches that hurts him, it is that he has such a desire to play that he is tense. »
“You have the fear of recidivism which amplifies the risks”
Last Wednesday, after the match in Montpellier (1-3) where he came into play, Renato Sanches said: “It’s a bit frustrating. It’s difficult to play well all the time because when you come back from injury, it’s hard.
The Portuguese will therefore have to face a new test. “Mentally it must be hard, he must lose confidence in himself and in his body”, underlines a physical trainer used to high level. Doctor in physiology and biomechanics, Jean-Bernard Fabre confirms the mental challenge: “It is obvious that each time you have to come back and then, when you come back, you have the fear of recurrence which amplifies the risks. It’s all energy-consuming. “While waiting to know the verdict of the exams, the specialist is not worried about the rest of Sanches’ career. “At 25, an injury to the hamstrings, unless it is really very serious, it should not jeopardize his ability to resume. He is still young. »
