Julian Ryerson left Norway’s World Cup group match against Senegal injured in the 13th minute on Monday evening in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The Borussia Dortmund right-back later sat on a light-blue cooler with his right thigh bandaged. The first read on the injury was not reassuring, but the full extent was not clear.
Ryerson in East Rutherford
He had to come off early in a match Norway entered with the profile of a possible dark horse, and the timing hit immediately for a team trying to manage its World Cup campaign. Erling Haaland was in the attack, but Norway was forced to continue without one of its defenders before the opening quarter-hour had passed.
Ryerson is 28 years old, and the visual after the substitution said enough: the cooler, the bandage, and the long look into the stadium. A Norwegian physiotherapist treated the right thigh on the sideline before the defender settled there, still in full view of the match.
Borussia Dortmund injury watch
The setback reaches beyond Norway. Ryerson is also a Borussia Dortmund player, so any muscle injury during international duty feeds straight into the club’s own injury picture.
That connection is sharper because Nico Schlotterbeck is already set to miss Germany’s match against Ecuador on Thursday after an ankle medial ligament injury. The DFB said he suffered that injury in the 2:1 win against Ivory Coast, and the report puts his absence at eight to ten weeks.
Schlotterbeck and August
Julian Nagelsmann said, "Es hätte seine WM werden können" about Schlotterbeck’s injury, and the defender will stay with the team at least until the Ecuador match. The same kind of waiting now hangs over Ryerson, with the next step depending on how his right thigh responds after leaving Senegal in the 13th minute. For Borussia Dortmund, that is the part that matters most: whether one injury stays short or becomes another problem into the Bundesliga-Start at the end of August.
