Ex-Villarreal star Giuseppe Rossi out for 4-5 months

All of us here at Villarreal USA have the highest regard for Giuseppe Rossi--one of the blog's biggest regrets is that we never got to sit down and do an interview with him while he was with Villarreal.  The manner in which he left the Submarine wasn't the easiest, either--we never really got to give him a good sendoff--but we all hoped his injury concerns were behind him.

Sadly, that hasn't been the case.  He played in 18 games for Fiorentina last year, scoring 14 times, but injured his knee in January.  He returned in April, ended up with 16 league goals, but enough fitness doubts remained that coach Prandelli didn't select him for the World Cup, so the story went.

Rossi had another right knee injury in training recently and the word is--after being reexamined by the doctor in Colorado who carried out the second surgery when he was with us--the ACL, which was operated on before, has good stability, but this time it's the meniscus that is the problem.  So, arthroscopic surgery will be carried out in Colorado, and he will begin rehab in New York before returning to Florence.  He will not play again in calendar 2014, and is expected to be out 4 to 5 months.

In his breakout season with us, 2010-11, he scored 18 goals in 36 league matches, another 11 in 15 Europa League appearances, and three more in the Copa del Rey, for a total of 32 in 56 matches.  Since that time (three and a half seasons by the time he returns) he will have played in only 39 matches, scoring 22 times.

Pepito is still only 27 and his form when he did return for Fiorentina was great, so we trust he will be able to overcome this latest hurdle.   From all of us, we wish you a speedy, but more importantly an effective, recovery!