Barcelona forward Dani Olmo has been ruled out for up to five weeks with a hamstring injury, the Catalan club confirmed on Monday.
Olmo, 26, was substituted in the second half of Sunday’s 4-1 win at Girona and tests at the training ground on Monday revealed he is set for at least a month on the sidelines.
He will miss Thursday’s trip to AS Monaco in the Champions League and LaLiga games against Villarreal, Getafe, Osasuna and Alavés, as well as the European match against Young Boys before October’s international break.
Barça will then hope to have him available for a tough run of fixtures after the break, starting with Sevilla on Oct. 20 and followed by games against Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Espanyol.
Olmo, a €55 million ($61.2m) summer signing from RB Leipzig, joins a lengthy injury list that also includes Ronald Araújo, Andreas Christensen, Marc Bernal, Frenkie de Jong and Fermín López.
Ansu Fati and Gavi are also sidelined, but both have returned to training recently and the former could be involved against Monaco this week.
This loss of Olmo comes on the back of an impressive start to life at Barça from the Spain international.
He scored for the third time in as many games in the win at Girona at the weekend, with Lamine Yamal telling ESPN Barça fans will enjoy themselves this season after the LaLiga leaders registered their best goal scoring start to a campaign since 2017.
Yamal, 17, scored twice in the win at Montilivi as Barça took their goal tally to 17 for the season after just five games under new coach Hansi Flick.
The last time Barça had scored so many goals at this stage of the season was in 2017-18, when they also netted 17 while Lionel Messi was still at the club.
Before the Messi era, you have to go back to the 1959-60 campaign to find the last time Barça scored as many goals through their first five league fixtures.
“We want to press so that the opposition feel weighed down,” Yamal told ESPN after Barça’s impressive win at Girona.
“But it’s just the fifth game and the message [from the coach] is that there is still the next one, the next one and the next one to win.
“Playing for Barça means [wanting] to win everything and we want to win every game possible because if you want to win LaLiga, that is what you have to do.
“I am sure the Barça fans will enjoy themselves this season. That’s what we want and will try to achieve, above all by winning games.”
Barça’s goals have been shared around so far, with Robert Lewandowski the league’s top scorer on four followed by Yamal and Olmo, who both have three.
Yamal, meanwhile, has also registered four assists in five games and leads the league in goal contributions with a total of seven, one more than teammate Lewandowski.
