Chelsea of England striker, Tammy Abraham was missing from The Blues’ English FA Cup victory over Sheffield United on Sunday due to a relapsed injury, while SSC Napoli of Italy striker, Victor Osimhen was shown a yellow card in the Italian Serie A.
Osimhen got a 90th minute booking and failed to score for Napoli in their 2-0 win away to AS Roma, despite replacing two-goal hero, Dries Mertens in the 66th minute of play at Stadio Olympico in Rome, while Chelsea’s coach, Thomas Tuchel disclosed Abraham’s situation after his side’s 2-0 win at Stamford Bridge.
Having suffered a fresh setback in his recovery from an ankle problem, Abraham was absent on an evening Tuchel extended his club record-breaking unbeaten start to 14 matches with a comfortable 2-0 win over Sheffield United as the Blues booked their place to face the Premier League pacesetters.
Later same day, the draw revealed that Chelsea will face Manchester City while Leicester City will play Southampton in the FA Cup semi-finals, which are set to be played on the weekend of April 17-18 at Wembley, with the final at the same venue on May 15.
Man City reached the last four with a 2-0 quarter-final win over Alex Iwobi’s Everton, a result which also meant the club had reached the last four of the competition three years running for the first time since 1932.
Pep Guardiola’s side are still in the hunt for an unprecedented quadruple, setting the pace at the top of the English Premier League as well as being in the Champions League quarter-finals and next month’s Carabao Cup final.
Abraham was conspicuously missing, as an own goal from Oliver Norwood preceded a Hakim Ziyech strike as Chelsea booked their spot in the semi-finals with victory over The Blades, due to a knock that the 23-year-old Nigerian-born England international initially got against Newcastle United in February.
He managed to play 45 minutes against Southampton five days later, but has now missed the last six matches of his team, and while there was initial optimism that he may have been ready to face Sheffield, he was nowhere to be seen after aggravating his ankle problem.
Tuchel disclosed: “He quit training yesterday after only five minutes of the warm up so there was no chance he could join the squad. It is more or less the same injury. He re-injured it a bit in a training accident exactly on the same spot where the first injury was so he is in pain.
“First he needs to be fit, second he needs to take it step-by-step, train well and fight for your way back. The way back is then maybe be a substitute and to be hungry and full of quality in training. These are the next steps but this is not the moment for him to worry abut the first XI because he has been out now for many games and unfortunately for too many games.
“It’s absolutely not his fault, he is hungry to come back and he tries all the time. But this is the risk in pushing the players to be back as soon as possible. We thought he would be in the squad today but he had the accident in training – it’s nobody’s fault. Now is kind of a restart and he can use the two weeks to get fit again.”
