Crystal Palace striker Jean-Philippe Mateta is likely to return from a serious facial injury in Saturday’s FA Cup quarter-final at Fulham.
The Frenchman was treated in hospital after being wiped out following a high challenge from Millwall goalkeeper Liam Roberts in Palace’s 3-1 fifth-round win on March 1.
Mateta required 25 stitches with Roberts handed an extended six-game ban for a collision the 27-year-old feared could have “broken bones or [caused] blood in my brain”.
It is expected Mateta, who has scored 12 league goals this season, will wear a specially-made face mask to protect the wound when he takes the field at Craven Cottage against Palace’s Premier League rivals.
Teasing his return, the former Mainz man said “it’s time” in an Instagram video that charted his recovery and the time he spent in his native Paris during his enforced break.
The video quoted passages from Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem ‘If’.
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Due to the international break, Mateta will have missed just one Palace game – a 1-0 defeat of Ipswich on March 8.
