Italy and Mexico Lose Players for World Cup

Riccardo Montolivo, a key midfielder for Italy, broke his left tibia during an exhibition game with Ireland on Saturday in London and will miss the World Cup.

Irish defender Alex Pearce fouled Montolivo in the ninth minute, and Montolivo was carried off on a stretcher.

“Montolivo has what we suspected, a broken tibia,” the Italy team doctor Enrico Castellacci said.

Montolivo was one of several players to be injured on a night of warm-up matches around the world. Mexico’s Luis Montes also broke his leg after scoring in a 3-1 win over Ecuador in Arlington, Tex. Mexico Manager Miguel Herrera said after the game that Montes had broken his tibia and his fibula.

Montolivo knew immediately what was wrong, as he was seen saying, “It’s broken” as fellow players and medical staff hovered around him while he was still lying on the field.

“Psychologically, he was destroyed,” Castellacci said after Montolivo was taken to a hospital for X-rays.

Montes was injured in the 35th minute after fighting for a loose ball with Ecuador’s Segundo Castillo. Montes was carried off the field, with his teammates crying on the field when they saw the severity of the injury. Mexico’s Rafael Márquez was also taken to hospital for X-rays because of a hard hit on his right foot. Márquez said later on his Twitter account that it was a minor injury.

LIMITED STADIUM TEST IN BRAZIL FIFA and Brazilian organizers are playing down the fact that the final test event at the stadium hosting the World Cup opener in São Paulo will not be held with a capacity crowd.

Only about 40,000 people will be allowed at the Itaquerao for a Brazilian league match on Sunday, meaning that organizers will not be able to fully test the stadium before the inaugural match between Brazil and Croatia on June 12.

Jérôme Valcke, the secretary general of FIFA, the sport’s governing body, said last week that it was “vital” to test the Itaquerao “under full match conditions, including the temporary seats.” But only some of the 20,000 temporary seats installed for the opener will be used because of safety concerns raised by the local authorities.

FIFA and the local World Cup organizing committee said that ideally, they would have preferred to have a full crowd of nearly 70,000 people. But they noted that the test event would still be “extremely important” to help make sure the stadium would be ready for the opener.

(AP)

SPAIN PICKS COSTA The upside was simply too tantalizing to ignore for Spain Coach Vincente del Bosque, who named Atlético Madrid’s Brazilian-born striker Diego Costa to his final 23-man roster for the World Cup on Saturday.

All final rosters are to be submitted to FIFA by Monday.

Del Bosque said last week that he was “not sure Costa will make it” and added that “we’ve still got time, but now it’s in the hands of the doctors and the medical team; we have to be cautious.” But he decided that a nagging injury to Costa’s right thigh, which limited him to less than a half-hour combined in the Champions League final and Atlético’s final Spanish league game against Barcelona, was not enough to preclude taking Costa to Brazil.

(NYT)

PLAYER HAS MALARIA Ivory Coast and Liverpool defender Kolo Touré has contracted malaria. The head of the medical staff for Ivory Coast, Cyrille Dah, said in a statement that Touré had probably contracted the illness on a trip to the Ivorian capital, Abidjan, before he joined the squad for its World Cup training camp in Dallas.

Dah said Touré, 33, a central defender, was having treatment and would return next week. (AP)