Brazilian superstar Neymar will undergo foot surgery on Saturday and recovery will take as long as three months, the national team doctor said Thursday.

The forward was already being ruled out for the second leg round of 16 Champions League tie against Real Madrid but now faces a race to be match fit for the World Cup this summer.

Rodrigo Lasmar, quoted on the website of Brazilian newspaper O Globo, said the world’s most expensive footballer was resigned to the lengthy lay-off.

The 26-year-old was carried off nine minutes from the end of his side’s 3-0 win over Marseille on Sunday.

Lasmar said, according to O Globo: “Neymar suffered a fracture to the fifth metatarsal, it is an important fracture in a foot bone. The operation will be in Belo Horizonte on Saturday morning, and the recovery takes from two and a half months to three months.

“Neymar is sad, but understands that he has no alternative now. He will devote himself to being well as soon as possible. We will do our best to get him ready as soon as possible.”

The lay-off means Neymar may miss the rest of the season with PSG, returning to fitness just weeks before Brazil’s World Cup campaign.

Brazilians are naturally concerned about the player’s condition ahead o the World Cup, where they have ambitions of walking away with a sixth title.

“We just might have lost the World Cup last Sunday,” one radio commentator, Milton Neves of Bandnews FM, said Wednesday.

Images of Sunday’s fateful duel between Neymar and Marseille player Bouna Sarr were being shown incessantly on TV, often in slo-mo, before he was stretchered off.

Newspapers featured close-up illustrations detailing Neymar’s foot and ankle.

“I don’t think we can really talk about fears of him not being at the World Cup. But there is a noticeable haste to find a solution so that Neymar will have recovered in time,” an ESPN Brasil sports commentator, Mauro Cezar Pereira, told AFP.

Provided by AFP Sport