Marti Cifuentes is urging Ghana to handle Abdul Fatawu with care as the winger aims to secure his place at the World Cup this week.
Leicester City’s leading scorer, Fatawu, is rejoining his national team for the first time since suffering an ACL injury while on international duty last November.
The forward sat out Ghana’s September fixtures due to the club’s concern that he might be putting excessive strain on his knee, particularly as one of the Black Stars’ matches was set to be played on an artificial surface.
However, Fatawu has now joined up with Ghana for this international window as they look to seal qualification for next summer’s World Cup.
Sitting at the top of their group with two matches remaining, Ghana require four points from their upcoming clashes with the Central African Republic and Comoros to book their ticket to North America, with the first encounter scheduled for Wednesday.
Although Fatawu has started all nine of City’s Championship fixtures this season, he has only completed the full 90 minutes on three occasions. Cifuentes is hopeful that Ghana will manage his star player’s workload carefully.
Cifuentes said: “We have been speaking with the medical department and the performance department about how Abdul is. There’s an improvement, obviously, every week.
“I would like the Ghana national team to take care of him because he’s still in this period where he has not played a lot of full games still. I’m sure they’re going to take care of him, because he’s an important player for us but as well for them.
“He wanted to go, that’s the most important thing, there’s a couple of important games for them, but he’s definitely looking really good.”
Fatawu is one of nine Leicester players currently on international duty over the next week and a half.
Also called up are Hamza Choudhury (Bangladesh), Jannik Vestergaard (Denmark), Jordan James (Wales), Louis Page (England U18s), Bobby De Cordova-Reid (Jamaica), Jeremy Monga (England U19s), Jordan Ayew (Ghana) and Patson Daka (Zambia).