Ünder’s Knee Injury Not Serious

Yesterday we gave a brief recap of Roma’s international affairs—Alisson shutting out Putin’s boys being the marquee story—but lost among all those headlines was a potentially grievous bit of news for Roma’s domestic agenda, an injury to Cengiz Ünder. And not just any injury, a KNEE INJURY! You’re no doubt familiar with Roma’s track record with knee injuries, they snap ACLs like Macho Man Randy Savage snapping so many slim jims.

Let’s, just for a second, imagine a world without Cengiz Ünder. Since scoring his first goal against Verona on February 4th, Ünder has factored into an astounding 37% of Roma’s goals over that span. Ünder’s five goals are tied with Gonzalo Higuain for the league lead since the beginning of February, while scoring at a 0.97 goals per 90 clip. Pretty impressive stuff from anyone, let alone a 20-year-old kid who went virtually unused prior to February.

So when news broke that Ünder hurt his knee on international duty with the Turkish National Team, our minds went to a dark place. Roma’s golden child was caught up in the ACL storm, another victim in Roma’s hapless quest to keep her players, you know, in tact.

So, it is with great pleasure that we pass along the report that Ünder is A-Okay, or has at the very least avoided any serious injury. Word out of Turkey suggests that Ünder’s left knee injury was merely a sprain, and that he’ll stay with the national team through the remainder of the international break—had it been more serious, one would imagine he’d be shipped off to the field surgeons at Gettysburg, I mean, Villa Stuart.

One would think, or at least hope to god, that Ünder won’t feature in Turkey’s friendly with Montenegro on Tuesday because Roma will assuredly need him come April, when they face Barcelona twice, Fiorentina and Lazio all within the first two weeks of April.