Germany\u2019s attacking midfielder Lennart Karl will miss the World Cup after sustaining a muscle tear in training before Saturday\u2019s friendly international against the United States (US), Coach Julian Nagelsmann said.<\/p>\n
The 18-year-old suffered a muscle bundle tear in his left thigh during training on Friday in Chicago and was taken to hospital. He will be replaced by Assan Ouedraogo.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel incredibly sorry for Lenny,\u201d Nagelsmann said. \u201cWith his light-heartedness, his creativity, his pace, and his personality, he fit into the team perfectly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karl enjoyed a meteoric rise this season as he helped Bayern clinch the domestic double and reach the Champions League semi-finals.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a huge shock for him and for all of us that he will miss the World Cup. It is only a small consolation that he is young and still has many tournaments ahead of him,\u201d Nagelsmann said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Assan Ouedraogo we are now getting a player who, similar to Lenny, had a great start with us. He is also highly talented and is meant to play here boldly and freely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Germany arrived in the US on Tuesday for the World Cup starting next week.<\/p>\n
The four-times champions have set their sights on winning the title after shock first-round exits at the previous two tournaments, in 2018 and 2022.<\/p>\n
The Germans, who have not tasted international success since winning their last World Cup title in Brazil in 2014, are in Group E and kick off their campaign against Curacao on June 14 before facing the Ivory Coast and Ecuador.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":36385,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-36383","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Germany arrived in the US on Tuesday for the World Cup starting next week.","published_date":"","news_description":"Germany arrived in the US on Tuesday for the World Cup starting next week.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36384,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36383\/revisions\/36384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=36383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}