Milan defender Berkay Karaca has undergone surgery to repair a fractured metatarsal in his right foot, the club confirmed in an official statement.
The setback comes at a bad moment for the young defender. Ruben Amorim has used this pre-season as a scouting exercise for the academy, giving first-team minutes to names like Francesco Camarda, Andrej Kostic and Christian Comotto. Karaca had earned his own place in the group, helped along by the international absentees away on World Cup duty and by Pervis Estupinan closing in on a move to Aston Villa, which thinned out the left side of the defence. A run of pre-season training under Amorim is exactly the kind of window that can turn a squad number into a proper look. That window is now shut for a while.
The club confirmed Karaca fractured the fourth metatarsal in his right foot and was operated on in Varese by Dr Carlo Montoli, with club doctor Andrea Bulgheroni present. He has been discharged and has already started his rehabilitation programme at Milanello.
Milan did not put a timeframe on the recovery, but a fourth metatarsal fracture requiring surgery typically means somewhere in the region of two to three months out, which rules him out of the rest of pre-season and the opening weeks of the campaign.
The frustrating part for Karaca isn't the injury itself, it's the timing. Chances to train under a new manager don't come around often for a youngster, and he'll now watch the rest of that audition from the treatment room.