Chelsea Women manager Emma Hayes believes Catarina Macario is unlikely to play for the club until next year.
USWNT international Macario joined Chelsea from Lyon over the summer but has yet to make her debut for her new side. The 24-year-old sustained an anterior cruciate ligament injury during a Lyon game in June 2022 and has not played since.
When Macario, who can play as a forward or attacking midfielder, signed a three-year deal with Chelsea in June, the club said she was making “good progress” in her rehabilitation from that ACL rupture.
Hayes — who will take over as the USWNT head coach at the end of the 2023-24 season — left Macario out of Chelsea’s Champions League squad for the first half of the campaign earlier this week.
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“I don’t think she’ll play this half of the season,” Hayes said on Macario. “I hope and if she does, it’ll be a bonus. But I don’t think the time she’s been out for we would take that risk.
“When you’ve been out a long time — this isn’t about me withholding, this is about the recognition that with all the will in the world, you can put a player on the grass with a knee history, and sometimes, if the knee blows up, you then have to…
