Arsenal centre back William Saliba has withdrawn from France\u2019s World Cup warmups against Brazil and Colombia in the United States because of an ankle injury.<\/p>\n
Saliba, who played at Wembley while managing the problem, had already been ruled out of Arsenal matches against Mansfield Town in the FA Cup and Brighton & Hove Albion in the Premier League earlier this month. Treatment and rest for a minimum of 10 days is the prescribed course of action for the centre back.<\/p>\n
The club will monitor him closely during that period. The initial rest period will come to an end for Saliba at the start of April, with Arsenal staff likely to be regularly assessing his health across those 10 days. The Gunners\u2019 first match back is an FA Cup quarterfinal away at Southampton on April 4.<\/p>\n
Crystal Palace defender Maxence Lacriox has been offered a debut France callup in Saliba\u2019s absence and will immediately travel to the national team\u2019s base at Clairefontaine. Once all players have reported, the French squad will fly to the United States. Thursday\u2019s match against Brazil takes place in Foxborough, Mass., followed by Colombia in Landover, Md., three days later on Sunday. Les Bleus will hope to win both matches, potentially cementing their status as favorite to win a second World Cup in eight years.<\/p>\n
It appears very much to be a case of a managed injury rather than a major absence, but Saliba\u2019s availability matters. He is considered crucial to Arsenal\u2019s hopes of still winning up to three trophies in what remains of 2025\u201326.<\/p>\n
Facing a lower-league opponent in the FA Cup could be helpful. Arsenal have exclusively faced teams from England\u2019s Championship or League One in the competition so far this season, and Saliba has only made a single 61-minute appearance in the FA Cup.<\/p>\n
A more testing fixture follows three days after Southampton when Arsenal travel to Lisbon for the first leg of the Champions League quarterfinal against Sporting CP.<\/p>\n
Schedule<\/p>\n
April 4 \u2014 Southampton (A) \u2014 FA Cup quarterfinals
\nApril 7 \u2014 Sporting CP (A) \u2014 Champions League quarterfinal first leg
\nApril 11 \u2014 Bournemouth (H) \u2014 Premier League
\nApril 15 \u2014 Sporting CP (H) \u2014 Champions League quarterfinal second leg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saliba withdrawn from France duty with ankle sprain; Arsenal monitor recovery before April schedule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9463,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,961],"tags":[947,1393,1047],"class_list":["post-9464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-international","tag-ankle-injury","tag-centre-back","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9464","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=9464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}