Injection fear cost Ribery, says doctor

France midfielder Franck Ribery could have played at the 2014 World Cup if he was not afraid of injections, the team doctor claimed.

The Bayern Munich man was withdrawn from Didier Deschamps’ squad in Brazil, after failing to overcome a back injury.

Ribery, 31, missed three weeks in the latter part of the Bundesliga season, and France’s doctor Franck Le Gall claimed Bayern were at fault for rushing him back for their DFB-Pokal final win over Borussia Dortmund on May 17.

“He was out for more or less three weeks and played a match which he probably shouldn’t have played because he played through pain,” Le Gall said.

Le Gall added that Bayern’s method of dealing with injury – via needle – had worn off on Ribery, who was no longer open to injections, which potentially cost him a spot in Brazil.

“Franck belongs to a club where the treatment of every injury, whatever it is an ankle sprain, bruises, muscular pain, spasm, muscle tear, it’s injections,” Le Gall said.

“And he got 10 by injury, so 20, 25, 40 per year or more. So after a while, he’s tired of injections.

“If for a moment we thought we could fix it like that, we did not do it because he’s afraid of injections now.”

Le Gall said while he discovered the reason for Ribery’s pain, he could not find a solution outside of injections to solve it in time for their Group E campaign against Ecuador, Honduras and Switzerland.

“The diagnosis of lower back pain is really vague, I heard some journalists trying to figure out the cause, it can be a slipped disc, it can be muscular strain,” Le Gall said.

“Ribery had a bit of everything but the medical exam he had was really reassuring.

“So we know why he got this pain, but…we did not find a way to stop the pain or to make him play with this pain.”