Clint Dempsey has suffered a suspected cruciate ligament injury which could put his place at the summer’s World Cup finals in danger.
The 26 year old striker was injured during the second half of Fulham’s 2 – 0 Premier League loss at Blackburn on Sunday.
Dempsey has been a key player for Fulham this season scoring 7 times from 25 appearances. He’s also an integral part of the USA national team and would have expected to be in their starting line up in South Africa. Dempsey has played 44 times for the US, who meet England in their opening Group C game this June.
Fulham are already without top-scorer Bobby Zamora, who suffered a collarbone injury earlier this month that will leave him out of action for several weeks and defender John Pantsil who has a knee injury.
The Fulham manager Roy Hodgson said:
The initial prognosis for Clint is not good.
It looks he has suffered cruciate knee ligament damage which if he has keeps him out of action for a while.
We won’t know for certain until the scan is completed on Monday but the doctors are pretty good these days and often their initial prognosis proves to be the correct one.
We think that Clint Dempsey, as an all round player, is very useful for us. Now, with him and Zamora out it makes us a bit weaker in that area than we’d like to be.
Where we are strongest for cover is in midfield. We’re not quite so strong in attack.
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