Beckham on course for November return

David Beckham could miss the whole of the Major League Soccer season because of the Achilles injury which has already ruled him out of the World Cup.

The 34-year-old Los Angeles Galaxy star suffered the injury playing for AC Milan in March and he indicated today that he may not play again until November, with the MLS campaign due to end on the 21st of that month.

Speaking backstage to the presenters of ABC show The View, Beckham said: "I won't be running for another three months so I'll be playing again in, probably, November."

Beckham added on mlssoccer.com: "This is an injury that is going to take time to heal. I'm only six weeks in after the surgery. I started therapy 10 days ago and just doing that every day. I kind of want to push it but with this kind of injury you can't. You just have to wait for it to heal and then move on.

"At the moment it's just getting the motion back into the ankle, the tendon, because obviously it's still repairing. I can't stretch too much, I have to wear a boot every day. If I haven't got a boot on, which I didn't today for a few interviews, I have to use crutches - it's one or the other at the moment. It's a pain. It's not easy moving around, but I have to protect it."

The surgeon who operated on Beckham in March, Sakari Orava, said at the time that six months was the likely time the player would be out.

"It is always so in a normal athlete but in a top-level (athlete) it is difficult to say, sometimes sooner, sometimes later,'' Orava said.