Pablo Mari.
Emilio Andreoli/Getty Images
Arsenal soccer player Pablo Mari faces at least two months out of the game after an operation on Friday for stab wounds from an attack in an Italian supermarket that left one man dead.
Milan’s Niguarda hospital said its trauma team had reconstructed two muscles in the back of the 29-year-old Spanish centre-back on loan at Monza, in Italy’s Serie A, from Premier League club Arsenal.
“This type of muscle injury usually requires two months of rest before one can resume physical activities,” it said, adding that surgery went well and rehabilitation would follow.
“I was lucky, because I saw a person die in front of me,” Mari was quoted as saying by Sky News in the aftermath of the attack.
On Friday he said that he and his family were “all fine” despite what they went through the day before.
“We want to thank all the messages of support and affection that we are receiving,” he said on Twitter.
Italian police said on Thursday a 46-year-old with mental health issues was detained after the attack in a Carrefour supermarket and was under guard in a psychiatric ward.
The assailant used a kitchen knife available for sale in the supermarket in the town of Assago. A 47-year-old Bolivian national who worked at the supermarket in a shopping mall died, while another employee and four customers were injured.
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