Nottingham Forest striker Taiwo Awoniyi has reportedly been placed into an induced coma following “urgent” surgery for a serious abdominal injury suffered during a Premier League match over the weekend.
Awoniyi collided with the post during Forest’s 2-2 draw with Leicester City on Sunday but, despite being clearly hampered after the incident, remained on the pitch for the final 10 minutes of the game.
Forest said in a statement on Tuesday that the Nigerian striker was “recovering well” following surgery on a “serious abdominal injury.”
British media, including the BBC and Sky Sports, reported that Awoniyi had been placed in an induced coma in hospital as part of the recovery process.
When reached by CNN, Nottingham Forest pointed to its Tuesday statement and declined to comment further.
Awoniyi sustained his injury as he tried to connect with a cross from Anthony Elanga.
The 27-year-old stretched to make contact with the ball in an attempt to score, but in his efforts, collided with the frame of the goal; it later turned out that Elanga had been offside but the sideline official didn’t raise their flag until after Awoniyi had struck the post.
Awoniyi received lengthy treatment on the pitch afterwards but was deemed OK to continue – Forest made its final permitted substitution after Awoniyi signaled he was fit to remain playing – despite being in clear discomfort.
According to Forest’s Tuesday statement, the decision to allow Awoniyi to remain on the pitch after evaluation from medical staff is what sparked a heated discussion on the field between the club’s owner, Evangelos Marinakis, and manager, Nuno Espírito Santo – an incident which had drawn criticism from pundits and social media – after the draw which left the club’s Champions League qualification hopes in the balance.
Espírito Santo said after the match that Marinakis was enquiring about the decision from the club’s medical staff to allow Awoniyi to continue rather than anything related to the performance of the team.
In Tuesday’s sternly-worded statement, Forest dismissed comments that Marinakis had confronted Espírito Santo as “fake news.”
“The truth of the matter is there was no confrontation, with Nuno or with others, either on the pitch or inside the stadium,” Forest said. “There was only shared frustration between all of us that the medical team should never have allowed the player to continue.
“We urge former coaches and players, and other public figures in the game, to resist the urge to rush to judgement and fake news online, especially when they do not have the full facts and context.”
Forest called the reaction to Marinakis and Espírito Santo’s on-field discussion “baseless and ill-informed outrage for the purposes of personal social media traction.”
Since joining Forest from Union Berlin in Germany in 2022, Awoniyi has scored 17 goals in 73 Premier League appearances for the club.
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