Xherdan Shaqiri suffers third thigh injury this season

After tearing his right rear thigh last October, and sustaining a thigh injury in mid-February, the "I hate your thighs" train has once again rolled around to Xherdan Shaqiri's place.

Withdrawn at halftime from Bayern Munich's 1-0 loss to FC Augsburg due to injury, the 22-year-old Swiss international was diagnosed with a right hamstring tear by the Bayern Munich team doctor. He'll be out for the foreseeable future.

Suffering one hamstring tear in a season is bad: suffering two is a bad omen: suffering three is bordering on the universe hates you territory. As I've noted on several occasions previously, hamstring injuries have a habit of becoming nagging, recurring injuries and it looks like Xherdan Shaqiri has fallen into that self-perpetuating cycle. Given the depth in the Bayern Munich squad, I'd hope that they completely shelve him for the season.

WIth the World Cup coming in June, you can bet heavily that if Shaqiri is capable of playing, he will be in Brazil. With these constantly recurring injuries to his hamstrings, rehabbing him quickly to get him back into the fray for the end season would be putting too much risk on the 22-year-old. The World Cup is an extremely demanding tournament and bringing a player carrying recurring hamstring problems into it partially healed is a great way to destroy a player's career (again, as I've noted before, see Fernando Torres). Shaqiri isn't just a valuable depth piece this year but also has the quality to be a phenomenal performer for this team long term and he's an asset Bayern Munich should protect accordingly.

In the short term, this throws another huge wrench into Pep Guardiola's plans as he'll now be without 6 of his usual gameday 18 for the 2nd leg of the UEFA Champions League quarter-final against Manchester United.  Which if panicking right now is your particular cup of tea, here's more ammo for your arsenal.