His goals also wrote the history of an inspiring promoted side in pre-season. Meanwhile, VfB Stuttgart sorely miss Sasa KalajdzicWho gave an update during the international break.
In Stuttgart right now, it’s not just Borna Sosa who needs him, who somehow no longer has anyone who can convert his crosses: Sasa Kalajdzic, with 16 Bundesliga goals the Swabian goal guarantee of the previous season. The then promoted team was even allowed to dream of Europe in the meantime.
The fact that VfB has to look down a year later is partly due to an injury crisis that also affected the striker. It all started with a corona infection, followed by an all too brief comeback against RB Leipzig. Then: shoulder injury. Operation. Several months of rest.
No “mental valley “
“I couldn’t even cut my own food,” the Austrian recalls in an interview with the “Stuttgarter Nachrichten “ about the “non-pleasure-taxable” time after his operation. “Difficult were on the one hand the pain, but on the other hand also the dependence on others.” However, according to his own statement, the attacker, who is often in good spirits, was not in a “mental valley”.
Good eleven weeks after the operation, Kalajdzic finally sees light at the end of the tunnel. Instead of lying around idly, the 24-year-old is now “allowed” to work much more actively on his comeback, and the progress is satisfactory: “My shoulder is fine – even if I have the feeling every day that it’s almost going to be ripped out of me.” The muscles just have to be built up again.
Stuttgart slipped to 15th place
In the meantime, the European Championship participant and goal scorer had retreated to his Austrian homeland, but in the meantime he is struggling again in the VfB rehab world. For a comeback that can hardly come soon enough for Stuttgart (15th in the table, last six times winless) “We’re pushing the limits “, assures Kalajdzic, “but we’re also sticking exactly to the doctors’ instructions”. One should not be too ambitious, “otherwise something can happen quickly”.
A big step beckons to Kalajdzic already “at the end of next week”: There is the prospect that the “playing” centre-forward will then finally be allowed to lace up his football boots again and complete his first training sessions on the pitch. That would still be during the international break. In mid-December, “four months after the operation “, he would like to try to “get fully into team training”.
