Jose Izquierdo won’t play a part in the restarted season
Will we ever see Jose Izquierdo in a Brighton & Hove Albion shirt again? There has been a further blow on the winger’s long road to recovery from multiple knee surgeries following the confirmation that he will not play a part in the restarted Premier League season.
The news came in a throwaway comment from Andy Naylor on an article on The Athletic. Naylor was replying to a question asking if he had any news on Jose Izquierdo, to which the Brighton correspondent responded with, “He will not be back before next season.”
That flies in the face of what Graham Potter has spent the past year saying. Potter has trotted out the line that he was hopeful that Izquierdo would feature before the 2019-20 season came to a close – and that was when the campaign was due to finish in May.
Even as recently as February, Potter told The Argus that Izquierdo could play a part in the relegation run in. But Naylor’s revelation instead reveals that we won’t see Izquierdo again until at least September, presuming that is when the 2020-21 season gets underway.
By then, it will be 18 months since Izquierdo’s last competitive action and over two years since the initial knee injury occurred. Izquierdo will have made just nine starts and eight substitute appearance in 24 months – as well as undergoing at least three knee surgeries in that time.
For many players, that sort of time on the sidelines can prove terminal to their careers. We are sadly entering the territory where it is doubtful that Izquierdo will return at all, let alone as anywhere near the same explosive talent as we was in his debut 2017-18 season.
Izquierdo’s troubles started at the 2018 FIFA World Cup, where he picked up a knee injury in Colombia’s opening game against Japan.
He put it down to a knock received when being kicked by a Japanese defender and attempted to play through the pain barrier. A scan after the tournament revealed a minor tear which it was thought could be treated with rest.
Within two sessions of Izquierdo’s return to Brighton training, it became apparent that wasn’t the case. A further scan revealed an injury to his meniscus, a very important area of cartilage in the knee. It required surgery to repair.
Knee injuries such as Izquierdo’s are so troublesome because of the role that the joint plays in the rest of the body. The knee connects to the lower leg, the upper leg and the back.
A damaged knee can impact on all these areas. Which is why you should never rush a player with a knee injury back to action as it increases the risk of causing a host of further complications across the whole body.
It was a meniscus injury that turned Micah Richards from England’s youngest ever defender to a player who was forced into retirement at the age of 30 after not playing for 32 months.
Richards had to have his workload carefully managed throughout his career, right from the moment when he suffered his first knee problem at the age of 19.
Manchester City and Fiorentina did that relatively successfully, as did Tim Sherwood at Aston Villa. Remi Garde was a different matter though.
The Frenchman had Richards training and playing through the pain. As a result, his knee swelled up anytime he got close to playing at competitive match intensity. That in turn led to back and hamstring problems.
After over two years sat on the sidelines at Villa Park without a single Premier League or Championship appearance, Richards had to call it a day.
The parallels with Izquierdo are there for all to see. Iquierdo made his initial return from his first operation at the end of September 2018.
A little over three months later and he suffered a different tear to the meniscus in the same knee in the first half of the famous 3-1 win over Crystal Palace at the Amex.
Again, the club decided not to operate. Izquierdo rested and was then thrown back into the first team in February 2019. Anyone who watched Izquierdo in his subsequent eight games could see very clearly that this was a man who wasn’t anywhere near match fit.
That came to a head after a disastrous showing in April’s 1-1 draw against Newcastle United. Izquierdo was hauled after 66 minutes and the club decided to put him back under the knife.
The Argus reported at the time that the procedure was “not expected to sideline Izquierdo for a sustained period, but he will be missing when the Seagulls’ third Premier League campaign, and Potter’s first as head coach, commences in August.”
“Not expected to sideline Izquierdo for a sustained period,” has now become 18 months out injured – including another operation in April, this time to clear out his right knee.
It makes you wonder how much further damage Brighton caused by playing Izquierdo last Spring, especially when Richards’ story offers such stark warnings about the dangers of a player with a meniscus injury battling through the pain.
You never want to see one of your own players injured, but it is particularly galling that it has happened to such a nice bloke as Izquierdo.
From the moment he unwittingly held his own photo shoot standing next to CPFC graffiti in the Lanes shortly after signing, he has been quite the character.
Off the pitch, he is an infections personality. Watch him laugh in an interview and you can’t help but smile. He talks about witch doctors and voodoo like it is completely normal and he once tried to become a professional tennis player. Jose Izquierdo even has a pet pig with more Instagram followers than half his Brighton teammates.
He isn’t bad on the pitch either, offering a totally different threat to any of the other wingers in Potter’s squad. Think of those stunning goals against West Ham United in the 2017-18 season and the team move he finished off away at Stoke City.
You can see the panic etched on full backs’ faces whenever Izquierdo gets the ball. How can they be expected to know what to do against an opponent who doesn’t look like he knows what he is going to do himself, as Izquierdo so often does? His unpredictability at times makes him unplayable.
In Izquierdo’s absence, various rumours have swirled. These range from him having a fourth and even fifth operation to try and repair his knee to the fact that he is stuck in Colombia due to lockdown and cannot exit the country for the foreseeable future.
What is undeniable is that with each month that passes, the return of Jose Izquierdo to Brighton & Hove Albion’s first team becomes more and more unlikely.
How long until “not before September” changes to December, then February, then next May? Will we even see him in an Albion shirt in the 2020-21 season?
Fingers crossed we do. He still has a big role to play at Brighton and could thrive in a Potter lineup where pace and predictability are so valued. But right now, it doesn’t look good.
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