VfB Stuttgart’s badly injured captain Christian Gentner is “on his way to recovery” after a horrific collision saw him swallow his tongue and left him with multiple facial fractures, his club said.
“Given the circumstances, he is well and on his way to recovery,” Stuttgart director Michael Reschke said on Monday.
The 32-year-old sustained fractures of the eye socket, nose and upper jaw when the knee of VfL Wolfsburg goalkeeper Koen Casteels caught him flush in the face late in Stuttgart’s 1-0 Bundesliga win on Saturday.
Gentner on Monday posted a picture on Instagram of the unaffected left side of his face, because the right is “not really presentable.”
“First of all, the most important info for many people who have worried: I am very well, I have — as already mentioned — one or another breaks in the face, but nothing that could not be corrected again,” he wrote.
Only the quick reactions of Stuttgart’s team doctor prevented a tragedy as Gentner, a former Germany international, had swallowed his tongue in the collision.
Gentner hopes to be “back playing again soon,” but Reschke said it was a miracle that he was not more seriously hurt.
“We really need to be happy that in some ways he got off lightly,” Reschke said.
As Gentner lay knocked out on the pitch, “my heart stopped. The terrible fears, which we all initially had, didn’t come true. Thank God,” Reschke added.
Gentner is expected to be out for several months, but “will still be a very important figure for this team this season,” Reschke said.
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