Puyol's long road to recovery

Posted Wednesday, September 11, 2013 by Marca.com

Carles Puyol will return to training with the rest of his teammates this week if he continues to have no more injury setbacks, but what is not clear is when he will be ready again to play his first game.

A few weeks ago both Tata Martino and Andoni Zubizarreta thought the break in the league for international matches would be the best time to bring Puyol back, but it appears that the date of his return is still as uncertain as it was back then.

Both the coaching staff and the club's doctors are in no hurry to rush the club captain back after the bad luck he has had to put up with over the last two seasons. Next Sunday it will be six months since the defender underwent arthroscopic surgery and since that date he has not been seen on a pitch, while he has to put up with a number of complications including a Baker's cyst that he had to have removed.

Puyol is on the road to recovery but his return will not be rushed and may now take longer than expected. Originally he was supposed to be ready to join in at some stage with pre season training before it was mentioned that he could return against Sevilla next weekend. That now seems unrealistic as does the match against Rayo the week after. It now seems that the objective will be to have him back and ready in time for the Almería match in three weeks time, quite a while later than originally planned.