Kalidou Koulibaly will miss the second leg of Chelsea’s Champions League quarter-final tie against Real Madrid with a hamstring injury that will sideline him for several weeks, interim head coach Frank Lampard has confirmed.
The Senegal international limped off in the 55th minute of Chelsea’s 2-0 first-leg defeat to the European champions at Santiago Bernabeu on Tuesday after sprinting, and was replaced by fellow summer signing Marc Cucurella.
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Lampard did not detail any other fresh injury concerns for Chelsea ahead of Saturday’s home match against Brighton & Hove Albion in the Premier League, but confirmed that Koulibaly will be unavailable for the foreseeable future.
“He won’t be available for either game (against Brighton or Real),” Lampard said in a press conference on Friday. “It’s a hamstring injury and it’ll be a matter of weeks rather than days.”
Koulibaly’s absence poses a selection problem for Lampard as he attempts to overturn a two-goal deficit against Madrid at Stamford Bridge next week, as replacement
Cucurella was at fault in the lead-up to Ben Chilwell’s red card and January signing Benoit Badiashile was not registered in Chelsea’s 25-man Champions League squad.
“He’s a very good, very experienced player,” Lampard said of Koulibaly. “People talk a lot about our squad but we haven’t got lots of cover in certain times, and the Champions League squad is different to the Premier League squad.
“It’s a disappointment for him and for us, but also an opportunity (for someone else). We’ll carry on without him and hopefully he’ll get fit as quick as he can.”
Chelsea also have problems to solve at the other end of the pitch, having failed to score in any of their last four matches across the Premier League and Champions League — the team’s longest collective goal drought since 1993.
Lampard insists he has not been surprised by the scale of his players’ struggles, but added there are no shortcuts to improving the team’s record in front of goal.
“It’s not been a bigger problem (than expected),” he insisted. “I understood it before I came.
“Trying to address it is our job. There’s a lot of talk about belief and I’ve said that word myself in the last two press conferences, but the reality is it’s work to replicate (what we do) on the training pitch, and also to have enough urgency in our attacking game that we have numbers in and around the box and an idea of how we want to attack. That’s part of the work.”
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(Photo: Getty Images)
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