Mexico national team forward Raul Jimenezis set for knee surgery that will keep him out until 2027, his club Wolverhampton Wanderers confirmed Wednesday, Oct. 14.
Jimenez suffered an MCL injury in a 1-0 loss to Everton on Sept. 16, with Wolves' training staff hoping to avoid surgery with the 35-year-old healing without intervention. However, the injury isn't evolving as hoped, meaning Jimenez will have a procedure on Oct. 16.
“There is a danger that we can keep waiting for things to improve by treating the knee conservatively (without surgery), but if that doesn't happen, then at that stage we need to have surgery and waste more time," Phil Hayward, the club's director of performance, said. "So, he'll have the surgery on Friday in London, and then he'll have around
three months of rehabilitation before he's ready to play again.
"It’s obviously really disappointing for all of us, but we need to look forward, get the surgery done and start the rehab process as soon as we can to get him back on the pitch helping the team as quickly as we can."
How many Mexico national team matches will Raul Jimenez miss?
For El Tri, the news means Jimenez won't take place in November's Concacaf Nations League quarterfinals, a two-legged series against Jamaica. Jimenez missed the September-October window, and Mexico tried Santi Gimenez, Armando "Hormiga" Gonzalez and Germán Berterame at central forward.
None were able to deliver the typical consistency of Jimenez, who scored three goals for Mexico in four appearances at the 2026 World Cup.
"It is fairly straightforward surgery for an experienced knee surgeon – the ligament is reattached to the tibia and there is no reconstruction required," Hayward said. "The first two weeks he’ll be working on the muscles to maintain the bulk, then after two weeks, once through the initial post-operative phase, he can progress the work in the gym and pool and start to build towards full-weight bearing activities at around four weeks.
“He's obviously really disappointed, as we all are. We all hoped that after the initial scans he would have been back pretty quickly, but unfortunately it's not responding at all. He's disappointed, but he's also happy that we've now got a plan in place with real clarity. We can build around that and make sure that we're getting him back in the time frame.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Raul Jimenez injury update: Mexico, Wolves forward gets bad news on knee
