ZIZZO SURGERY DELAYED UNTIL LATE-OCTOBER David Smith - Friday, October 16, 2009
After suffering a serious knee injury earlier in the week, corrective surgery on Sal Zizzo's knee has been delayed by team doctors until the end of the month.
Team officials previously had indicated the operation to repair the damage to Zizzo's left knee would likely occur by the end of the week, however the decision was made on Thursday to allow some time for the swelling to reduce.
"At this moment it is not possible to make an operation like this since his knee is still too swollen," Hannover press chief Andreas Kuhnt explained.
"The doctors feel as thought it is better if they wait for two more weeks and so they plan to operate in the end of October," he added.
The midfielder's injury occurred in training on Monday as several team members were away for international duty, and entails ruptured anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in his left knee.
"It was a normal training session," Kuhnt explained. "He was running, then came to a stop, and in this moment the injury happened. There were no [collisions with] other players involved."
The injury caps off a difficult year for Zizzo, in which a rumored January loan to 2. Bundesliga club Rostock was ultimately shelved as the team underwent a contentious change in upper management, then nearly-completed season-long loan to Fortuna Düsseldorf was also canceled at the last minute due to reported heart irregularities.
The former UCLA player had been splitting time between the first team and Hannover's U-23 team, which competes in Germany's fourth-tiered Regionalliga Nord, for most of the current season.
The appointment of Andreas Bergmann, Zizzo's previous coach with the Reds' U-23 team, to the first-team position in September had seen him become a semi-regular inclusion on the bench, however his time on the field in the Bundesliga had so far been limited to a single appearance in the 2009-10 season.
"We expect him to be out six months or maybe a little bit longer at this moment," Kuhnt concluded.
The expected outage will almost certainly keep him off the field for the remainder of the season, leaving his future with the club, with whom he is signed through the summer of 2010, in question.
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