It was one of those stomach-churning moments when, within seconds, you know something has gone badly wrong.
Jamal Musiala was writhing in agony, but what really hit hard was the way players on both teams were reacting to the Bayern Munich forward’s injury.
Paris Saint-Germain defender Willian Pacho knew immediately, holding his head and signalling to the medics on the touchline. His team-mate Marquinhos arrived on the scene quickly, too. Bayern forward Harry Kane was on his knees, checking on Musiala’s well-being, as was captain Joshua Kimmich, who took one look at his young team-mate’s left leg and turned away in apparent dismay.
There was also the horrified reaction of Bayern’s Canadian full-back Alphonso Davies, who was conducting a live-streaming watchalong on social media while recovering from a serious injury of his own. He tore off his headphones and, like Pacho and Kimmich, held his head in his hands, wide-eyed in a shock.
Broadcasters sensibly chose not to replay certain angles of the injury because, as Davies and everyone else knew by now, the images were so graphic.
The half-time whistle came moments later and, by this point, it had dawned on PSG goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma that there were serious consequences to his collision with Musiala. Donnarumma fell to his knees, looking devastated as he left the pitch. Musiala was carried off on a stretcher and was soon on his way to an Atlanta hospital, his prospects for the new season in serious doubt before it has even begun.
There was no official news from Bayern on Saturday evening. The club did not respond to a story by German newspaper Bild, which suggested that Musiala had broken his left fibula and damaged several ligaments, ruling him out of action for four to five months.
After his team’s 2-0 defeat in an enthralling, high-quality game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Bayern coach Vincent Kompany said he had rarely felt so “angry” as he did at half-time. “There are many things in life that are much more important than this (football),” he said. “But for these guys it’s their life. Jamal lives for this.
“He came back from a setback and then it happens the way it happens and you feel powerless.”
Sitting in that news post-match news conference, that word “angry” seemed to relate to the cruelness of the situation — a cruel blow to a wonderfully gifted 22-year-old who has only just returned to action after a hamstring injury — rather than the nature of the collision with Donnarumma. Moments earlier Kompany had described it as an “accident”.
But others in the Bayern camp were nothing like so forgiving.
As Kompany’s news conference was taking place, elsewhere in the stadium his goalkeeper and captain Manuel Neuer was blaming his opposite number, Donnarumma. So too was Max Eberl, Bayern’s board member for sport.
“It was a situation where you don’t have to go in like that,” Neuer told reporters. “That is taking a risk. He takes the risk of injuring his opponent.”
Eberl agreed. “If I jump on the lower leg with 100 kilos, after a sprint, there’s a high risk that something will happen,” he said. “I don’t think he (Donnarumma) did it intentionally, but he also didn’t take care.”
Neuer also criticised Donnarumma’s response to Musiala’s injury, saying he felt the Italian international should have shown more compassion. “I went to him and said, ‘Don’t you want to go to our player,’” he said. “It’s a matter of respect to go over and wish the guy all the best. He did it afterward. Fairness is always important. I would have reacted differently.”
Much of this felt harsh.
Donnarumma appeared oblivious at first because, having swept up the ball, he had already got up, turned his back and tried to get on with the game. Upon seeing Musiala in such a difficult state, he looked distraught — so much so that Kane found himself trying to console and reassure the goalkeeper. As he left the pitch at half-time, covering his face, PSG backroom staff escorted him towards the dressing room.
After the game, Donnarumma posted on Instagram a picture of himself walking off covering his face at half-time, with PSG backroom staff at his side. With it was a message for Musiala, saying “all my prayers and well wishes” were with the Bayern youngster.
There is a different conversation to be had about the incident — about what happens when a goalkeeper, in this case one who is recorded as standing 6ft 5in tall and weighing just over 14 stone, charges out of his goal and collides with an opposition player just above the ankle.
Another of the modern game’s great goalkeepers, Thibaut Courtois, offered his thoughts after Real Madrid’s 3-2 victory over Borussia Dortmund.
“I was watching it with my father and my son and when he (Musiala) fell, I said, ‘Oh, that’s ugly,’” Courtois said. “Blaming Donnarumma seems excessive to me, because in the end we goalkeepers go to the ball, like the strikers go — and when we do, the strikers do not measure if their feet reach our face.
“It was very bad luck. It’s going to hurt Donnarumma’s soul too. If it’s your team-mate it hurts more obviously and you’re going to criticise (the opponent), but the action is not so avoidable. Donnarumma had to go out there.”
It was not straightforward incident. Pacho was the player who was closest to the ball in the PSG penalty area, preparing to shepherd it out of play, but both Musiala and Donnarumma showed more determination to reach it. For Musiala, that meant trying to squeeze through a gap that didn’t seem to exist — and certainly not once Pacho had appeared to step across him, the way defenders often do in such situations, and Donnarumma had swooped in a manner that saw him dive across both players.
Could it have been a penalty? Possibly.
Even if Donnarumma got to the ball fractionally ahead of Musiala, the momentum and force of his challenge led him to wipe out his opponent. Goalkeepers are often given the benefit of the doubt in such situations because of the nature of their role. But in an era when playing the ball first is no longer a defence when it comes to heavy challenges elsewhere on the pitch, there was at very least a debate to be had.
Even so, as Courtois suggested, the criticism of Donnarumma seemed out of place.
There were numerous heavy challenges in the quarter-final, particularly the one on Leon Goretzka that saw Pacho sent off in the 82nd minute. The suggestion that Donnarumma was “taking a risk” of injuring Musiala is a reasonable one. But it is a contact sport in which those risks are taken dozens of times in every game.
Donnarumma should not be the story here. The story is Musiala and an injury that threatens to cast a shadow over a brilliant young career, at very least in the short term. “It doesn’t look good,” Kompany said. “We hope that everything goes well and that he receives the best possible medical treatment and has the best recovery. But I’m not going to make a diagnosis here.”
Even on a day when the Bundesliga champions bowed out of the Club World Cup, having played some excellent football at times, and when Thomas Muller made his 756th and final appearance for the club, the Musiala injury dominated thoughts of all in the Bayern camp.
“You could tell immediately that something very bad had happened,” Muller said. “It didn’t look good. You could see during the first half his intensity, how much he loves playing football. In a situation like this, thoughts should centre around Jamal. And let’s be careful that we don’t have tasteless conversations after someone has been injured like that.”
Bayern will go on without Muller, who has served them with distinction for the past 17 years and is now, at 35, pondering whether to pursue a new challenge in Major League Soccer.
There was plenty in Bayern’s performance in Atlanta, where they were happy to play the European champions at their own game, to suggest their prospects under Kompany for the coming season are bright. But the Musiala injury will hang over Bayern’s players as they fly back to Munich on Sunday.
Kompany has given them a three-week break to try to rest and recover before building up to the new Bundesliga campaign, which starts on August 23, but for Musiala a season which promised so much is now one of uncertainty. He will hope to be back on this side of the Atlantic for next summer’s World Cup.
That is quite the incentive as he embarks on the long road to recovery.
(Top photo: Alex Grimm/Getty Images)
