Getafe lose Molinas for two months and the left flank with him
A torn thigh muscle sidelines Kevin Molinas until around 21 December, and Getafe must now cover fourteen matches without their left winger.
Getafe's season was already being asked to hold its shape. Now the left side of it goes missing for roughly ten weeks.
Kevin Molinas tore a thigh muscle on 12 October, and the club's medical staff put his return at around 21 December. That is an estimate, not a promise. The Paraguayan winger is 31 and has been a Getafe player since he came through the youth intake in April 2047; he has made 412 appearances and scored 111 goals for the first team, plus 19 games and 11 goals for Getafe B. He has 104 caps and 36 international goals.
This season he had played nine games and scored three times. Those are the numbers of a winger who was producing, and Getafe now lose that production, that width and the threat he carries down the left. Fourteen club matches will be played before he is due back, and the shape of the team changes in all of them.
The temptation will be to call it a squad problem. It is not. It is a specific absence in a specific place on the pitch, and Getafe have to solve it with what they have.
"Kevin is a loss for us, of course," said one figure at the club. "But we have players who can take that responsibility, and they will." That is what every club says. Whether it is true is decided on the pitch, not in a statement.
Getafe have never been a club that can absorb this sort of thing quietly. Their supporters know the difference between a winger who stretches a defence and one who merely occupies the space. Molinas has been the former for a long time.
He will be back when the muscle says so. Until then, Getafe play without him, and the left flank is the place to watch.