LA Galaxy head coach Greg Vanney couldn’t contain his annoyance after star forward Javier “Chicharito” Hernández spilled the beans on his injury status during a live stream on Twitch.
The Mexican forward has been suffering from a hamstring injury and declared himself unavailable for Saturday’s game against FC Dallas.
“Am I going to play in Dallas? No, I’m still recovering from my injury. I’m going to be between two to five more weeks out because we have to be very careful with the recovery to avoid relapses,” Chicharito said.
At a press conference ahead of the game in Texas, Vanney admitted that Chicharito’s report on Twitch wasn’t exactly the way he’d prefer his team’s injury news to be revealed.
“I think at the end of the day, players sometimes get out in front of it and want to let fans and other people know how they’re doing,” Vanney said. “But ultimately there is a way and a time and a place to give that, because it’s also about the opposition, game management, game prep, all those kinds of things.
“It’s not earth shattering in this situation, but in different circumstances these things could be very important information that you give to the other team or the opposition that you don’t necessarily want to be doing.”
Vanney also pushed back against his striker’s assessment that he could be out for more than a month, saying he’s hopeful the timeline could be as little as 10 days.
“With Javier, he’s in the treatment phase, then he’s gotta go through return-to-play [protocol],” Vanney said. “I don’t know exactly … 2-5 weeks is a long range. Our anticipation with the grade 1 hamstring strain is 10 days to a couple of weeks.”
Chicharito scored 18 goals in 32 regular season games for the Galaxy in 2022. The club will make its season debut against FC Dallas after last week’s opener against LAFC at the Rose Bowl was postponed due to severe weather.
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