Micky van de Ven has described his immediate reaction after a challenge that left Liverpool striker Alexander Isak injured. The Tottenham Hotspur centre back said he contacted Isak directly following an incident that, Liverpool later revealed, fractured the striker’s fibula and also damaged his ankle. Isak is expected to be sidelined for at least two months.<\/p>\n
Van de Ven, 24, spoke at Tottenham\u2019s Christmas party for junior supporters and underlined that his first priority was to check on Isak personally. \u201cI\u2019ve texted him,\u201d the 24-year-old told Sky Sports at Tottenham\u2019s Christmas party for junior supporters this week.<\/p>\n
He expanded on that in a longer explanation: \u201cYeah, yeah, yeah, of course. I sent him a text because I didn\u2019t want to injure him, I didn\u2019t want to do something to hurt him, of course. I just wanted to try to block the shot and I think it was a bit unlucky how his foot landed between my legs. So, yeah, I sent him a text afterwards and I wanted to wish him all the best, of course, for his recovery, that\u2019s what I said to him, and I hope to see him on the pitch very soon again.\u201c<\/p>\n
Asked whether Isak had replied, Van de Ven said: \u201cYeah, yeah, he really appreciated the message,\u201d the Netherlands international revealed. \u201cHe texted back, yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
The challenge drew sharp criticism from Liverpool manager Arne Slot, who described it as reckless. \u201cThe tackle of Van de Ven if you make it 10 times, I think 10 times there is a serious chance a player gets a serious injury,\u201d he fumed.<\/p>\n
Tottenham manager Thomas Frank defended his player. Former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher also offered a contrary view, telling Sky Sports: \u201cThere\u2019s a lot been made about a lot of the challenges in the game from Tottenham players and a lot of them weren\u2019t clever. I\u2019ve put myself in Van de Ven’s position and that\u2019s a challenge I\u2019d probably make. He\u2019s trying to block it, it\u2019s just the follow-through. I don\u2019t know where else anyone thinks his foot\u2019s going to go. He has to make that challenge. You can\u2019t let the striker just get a shot away there in that situation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Micky van de Ven says he texted Alexander Isak after a challenge that fractured Isak’s fibula. Soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,969,187],"tags":[195,947,1215],"class_list":["post-5344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-premier-league","category-tottenham-hotspur","tag-alexander-isak","tag-ankle-injury","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}