Spain Coach Refuses to Take Responsibility for Gavi’s ACL Injury

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Spain coach Luis de la Fuente has insisted that the national team is not at fault for Barcelona midfielder Gavi suffering a season-ending ACL injury this month, with the 19-year-old expected to also be ruled out of Euro 2024 in the summer.

Gavi was injured in the first half of Spain’s dead rubber qualifier against Georgia, suffering a “complete tear” of the ACL in his right knee and also injuring the lateral meniscus.

Questions have been asked whether Gavi, who has already played 138 senior games for club and country while still a teenager, needed to be on the pitch given that Spain’s qualification was already secure. Worse still, he had already taken a knock to the same knee, been treated and returned to the pitch to continue playing, before doing the damage that forced him off after 26 minutes.

De la Fuente has stressed there was no reason to believe that Gavi was injured from the first knock.

“I asked him what it was like at half-time, when he got to the locker room. He told us that in the first he hadn’t noticed anything,” the coach told El Larguero on Cadena SER.

“The doctors did the relevant tests on the pitch, they didn’t see anything and decided that he should return to the field. If we had seen an injury…Gavi does not enter the field for even a second.”

De la Fuente went on to state that at no point was a request made to either he or the Spanish football federation (RFEF) for Gavi to sit it out against Georgia.

“No one asked me that Gavi not play that second game with the national team. Neither me nor the RFEF, I understand that if [Barcelona] had called, they would have told me,” he explained.

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