Celtic goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel has stated that he may have already played his “last football game.”
The 39-year-old requires shoulder surgery after sustaining an injury last February.
Schmeichel played his last match on February 22nd and is scheduled to undergo the first of two operations later this month. As a result of the injury, he will miss Germany’s World Cup playoff semi-final against North Macedonia on March 26th.
“It’s probably my last game of football,” Schmeichel told the English media. “I’ve been a footballer since the day I was born, and this is devastating. It’s very difficult to take in at the moment.”
He continued enthusiastically: “I’ll do everything I can to see if I can come back. It would be one of the greatest achievements of my career if I could return from an injury like this. I’ll fight, I’ll give it my all, and I’ll stick to the rehabilitation program.”
Schmeichel, who won the Premier League title in 2016, explained the details of the injury: “I now need two operations to repair my shoulder. I have a ruptured biceps muscle, a torn rotator cuff, a dislocated shoulder, and a torn meniscus. It’s all over my shoulder joint.”
To put the scale of the injury into perspective, he said: “To put it in perspective, it’s like a field player tearing both his ACL and Achilles tendon at the same time. It looks like I’ll need 10 to 12 months of rehabilitation.”
The former Leicester City goalkeeper, who won the Premier League title in 2016, is out of contract at the end of the current season and now faces a recovery period that could last up to a year.
