Looking Ahead

Having suffered a serious knee injury on the cusp of the new season, Muhamed Besic is showing the determination fans know him for as he fights back to full fitness.

- Rob Urbani

Muhamed Basic can see light at the end of the tunnel after the most challenging period in his foot balling career.

On a warm August evening at Old Trafford, 10 days before the start of the new season and an occasion celebrating the achievements of Wayne Rooney, Basic suffered one of the most dreaded injuries in the game - a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).

Innocuously sustained - the norm with setbacks of this type - the midfielder’s 2016/17 campaign was effectively in ruins before it had even begun.

Almost six months have passed and Basic’s steely determination shines through in his first interview since damaging his right knee.

He is back training daily on the football pitches at USM Finch Farm and is talking about wanting to return to match action, an ambition of once again pulling on the royal blue of Everton before the season reaches its conclusion.

“I have needed to have a goal,” he explains. “But if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t matter, because the most important thing is my knee. I will always push, but the medical staff will take care of me.”

Naturally, Basic is keen to look forward, intent on focusing on what lies ahead rather than dwell on half-a-year’s worth of frustration.

“I’m now at five-and-a-half months after my operation,” adds the Bosnian. “We are going from week to week to see how I am getting fit. But [this injury] always takes between six and eight months. I speak every day with the medical staff when we train and I am in communication with the coach.

“I had three or four months just in the gym - the first month I was just on a bed waiting to progress. Now I want to progress even more, to train with the team. I’m looking forward to it.