OK, I’m going to preface this story, which has a particularly scary headline, by saying that you should absolutely NOT FREAK OUT. OKAY? STOP IT. ITS FINE. EVERYTHING WILL BE ALL RIGHT.
If you’re connected to social media then you already know that there were rumors floating around the various Spurs ITK accounts and its assorted media aggregators about Kinsky having surgery at the end of the season. The implication was that Kinsky is carrying some sort of injury, much like Guglielmo Vicario before his own surgical procedure, and there was a distinct freak-out from terminally-online Spurs fans.
So there are a few things to unpick here. First, contrary to the earlier reports (which I will not link to) this appears to be a medical issue and not a football-related injury. That’s important. Notably, we have no details as to what this “medical issue” is that requires a “small procedure” but it could be anything, from having a mole removed, maybe a suspicious lump, or perhaps cosmetic follicular depilation to remove… whatever it is he’s sporting on his face at the moment that could only generously be called a “goatee.” The truth is, we don’t know and we may not know. It’s pointless to speculate, so I won’t do so and I’d encourage the rest of you not to either. But it sure doesn’t seem like anything particularly serious.
As to why Kinsky would opt to have the surgery this summer and miss the World Cup… well, it might be something that needs to be done in the short term for whatever reason (again, not speculating). Kinsky is a Czech international footballer who has yet to make his full senior debut for the Czech Republic. While he was listed on Czechia’s preliminary World Cup roster, he was one of seven keepers on that list and the suggestions are he’d be way behind Matej Kovar and Lukas Hornicek. Even if he made the squad it’s highly unlikely he’d see the pitch anyway. I might even suggest that undergoing this procedure signifies that he’s already been told he’s unlikely to make the final squad. A lot of players with no other commitments opt to have medical procedures done immediately following the end of the league season, so this doesn’t strike me as anything to worry over, and this isn’t a decision one makes if there’s any chance that he’s going to make a World Cup squad for a competition that starts in a couple of weeks
So yes, Kinsky’s going to have a medical procedure. No, it probably doesn’t mean anything about Sunday’s league-ending (and relegation-deciding) match against Everton, in which I would assume he starts. Nor is it another spurious knock on Tottenham’s physio and medical team, since it’s not a playing injury. It’s just a thing that players do after a long surgery when they know they don’t have much football to play for a couple of months.