Injury Rehabilitation, Family Time & TV Boxsets For Ricardo

- Leicester City right-back Ricardo Pereira catches up with LCFC TV
- Ricardo is following Government guidelines to stay at home while also recovering from an ACL injury
- The 26-year-old provides an update on how he is faring at an early stage of his rehabilitation

Just like his Leicester City team-mates, Ricardo, 26, is remaining at home as part of important Government guidelines in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Beforehand, however, it was confirmed that the Portugal international sustained a serious ACL injury during the 4-0 victory over Aston Villa at King Power Stadium on Monday 9 March.

Since then, Ricardo has undergone successful surgery and is in the early stages of rehabilitation, albeit in uniquely challenging circumstances due to the current situation.  

"I’m better now," he told LCFC TV's Dan Bates earlier this week. "I struggled in the first days after returning home with the pain, and it was difficult, not being able to do anything on my own.

"It helped to get up to do the small rehab that I’m already doing, but I feel better each day. In the game (vs. Villa) I felt something was not right. I felt that I had something, but not as serious as the result.

"Normally this kind of injury, you have a lot of pain straight away, [a sign that] you have something, but in my case that didn’t happen. It was a shock even bigger for me. 

"Normally you go to the training ground. Maybe you don’t every day, but you go twice a week or three times a week, something like that, so it’s new situation for me. 

"I have my mum here. She came two days before the operation and I had, here, my girlfriend at the time it happened, so it was important and good for me to have someone by my side. 

"When I am talking with my mum or with my girlfriend, we say sometimes it’s a bit boring, or we cannot go out for a walk or something.

"Then, on the other side, you think there are people facing this alone and it’s more difficult for them. But I think, for our health, it’s important to stay home and not be in contact with other people."

While Ricardo will be supported all the way through his rehabilitation remotely by the Club's medical staff, it's still at an early stage as he recovers from surgery.  

In the meantime, the former FC Porto defender has been relaxing, catching up on popular TV boxsets, and he has some recommendations for the Blue Army. 

He continued: "It's been a lot of being seated, laying down on the couch, watching TV, watching some series, chatting! Unfortunately, I can’t do much more than that. 

"At the moment I finished Vis A Vis, the Spanish series. I think it has some of the same actors as the Casa De Papel, or The Money Heist, so it’s a nice series to watch, I just finished yesterday."  

Over the past fortnight, meanwhile, Ricardo was selected by 71.9 per cent voters to be crowned as the Club's all-time best Premier League right-back by Leicester fans on Twitter.

After just two seasons at King Power Stadium, 'Ricky P' has thrilled the Blue Army with consistently excellent performances for the Foxes, helping them climb to third in the Premier League standings.

"It’s very good to be in that position, being picked by the supporters," he added. "It was between a lot of players, some players that I don’t know, some players that I know, like Danny Simpson.

"He was in the team that won the [Premier League], so I feel proud because of that and happy. I think that’s one of the things sometimes I talk to friends [about].

"I say it’s important to enjoy football. When we started to play, it was just for fun, to be happy, and I think, of course, now we have more responsibility.

"We have a lot of people, they are working for us, and we have to give effort for them. We have to enjoy [it] too and we cannot forget that part of football, being happy in what you do and having fun too."

Finally, Ricardo emphasised the importance of adhering to the guidelines - of staying at home, protecting the NHS and saving lives.

"I think it’s crucial because if we want this to be over, or not to be as dangerous as it’s being, we have to take these measures," he explained.

"We have to respect, we have to stay at home, we have to be isolated, not to compromise even more the situation as it is, and to help the NHS is obviously very important.

"We don’t want to arrive to a time that they won’t have hands to deal with everyone there, so we don’t want that to arrive, and we have to be safe and at home and be careful and be patient too."