On Tuesday, Wolverhampton Wanderers took to Twitter to share a picture of Raúl Jiménez training with his club teammates with a captain, ‘back at Compton’.
The striker hasn’t featured for the Premier League side since the end of August and was sidelined with an injury.
Wolves gave the Mexico international permission to continue his recovery in his country and there has also been concerns over his involvement with El Tri for the 2022 World Cup.
Earlier reports had suggested Mexico manager Gerardo Martino would wait until the last minute for the 31-year-old.
Journalist Gerardo Melin, writing in his column for El Universal, has been highly critical of the ex-Barcelona coach.
Melin says the manager’s decision to wait for the Wolves striker and Sevilla’s Jesús Manuel Corona ‘borders on the abnormal’.
Both players are coming back from an injury and have minimal options to play in Qatar and are keeping the Argentine ‘awake at night’. That’s because the coach maintains a ‘sick hope’ of having the two attackers in his squad for the FIFA tournament.
Melin claims Martino is ‘disrespecting others’ with his treatment of Jiménez. The latter’s decision with the Wolves player and Corona sends a message of distrust to the rest of the squad. It suggests the manager doesn’t trust other attackers to fill in for the duo.
The journalist further states: ‘It is a pity that both Raúl and Jesús Manuel are nowhere near being left out of the World Cup. We would have loved to see them, because they are stars of the National Team, but they have been caught up by those imponderables that attack some players before a big event.
‘Corona and Jiménez are neither physically nor in soccer, fit to face a high-demand tournament. Pubitis, abductor pain or whatever the Mexican Wolf has, has kept him out of the game for a long time. Neither the doctors of the National Team nor those of Wolverhampton have given the green light for Jiménez to reappear on the pitch.’
