With every day that goes by, James Maddison’s injury situation continues to get worse. Today, the BBC is reporting that Maddison’s knee injury is such that not only is he out for the remainder of the season, including the Europa League final, but he could also miss the start of Tottenham Hotspur’s 2025-26 preseason.
Maddeningly, it appears no journalist in England knows how to report on sports injuries, because apart from the vague “knee injury” we have no real idea exactly which ligament has been hurt. ACL? MCL? PCL? We don’t know, and that sucks, because those kinds of details could really impact how long Madders is out and what his recovery will look like.
That said, we know it’s serious because otherwise the club wouldn’t be leaking this information to Sami Mokbel. Potentially missing the start of preseason means at least a 3-4 month recovery time, and possibly longer to get back up to speed. This injury could also have ripple effects throughout the summer transfer window — Spurs might have been looking for a capable Maddison rotation option anyway, but it becomes even more important now, as Spurs cannot replicate the kind of creativity Maddison brings to the side when he’s unavailable. (Note to Daniel Levy: Rayan Cherki is right there.)
With Lucas Bergvall also out for the rest of the season, Spurs will need to lean heavily on Yves Bissouma, Rodrigo Bentancur, Pape Matar Sarr, and Dejan Kulusevski for the central midfield positions, and pray to all that is good and holy that they don’t pick up any more injuries.