Jermain Defoe could play in Tottenham Hotspur's Champions league playoff against Swiss club Young Boys on Wednesday despite being booked in for groin surgery that will rule him out of England's forthcoming Euro 2012 qualifiers.
The striker has been troubled with a groin problem since the World Cup finals in South Africa and aggravated it during the 3-2 first leg defeat by Young Boys in Switzerland last week.
Surgery could rule Defoe out for a month.
"It might only be half a game he can last now, but it's getting less each time - the pain's getting worse," Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp was quoted by the BBC as saying.
"He wants to play and train all the time but he's got to have it done now. He can't go on like that.
"He's not trained a lot. When he has trained, he's been all right, he's been sticking goals in.
"But then he's had days off where he couldn't train and he's getting worse, he's getting worse all the time. Sixty minutes is about as much as he can last."
Tottenham will definitely be without Croatia midfielder Luca modric after he also strained his groin against Young Boys - a match played on artifical grass.
The north London club, who like Young Boys are trying to qualify for the Champions League for the first time, hit back from 3-0 down in Berne to give themselves a fighting chance of reaching the lucrative group stage.
Redknapp hopes to have strikers Robbie Keane and Roman Pavlyuchenko, scorer of his side's second goal in Switzerland, available after they also missed Saturday's 2-1 Premier League win at Stoke City.
The weekend's Premier League fixtures are the last before an international interlude in which England face Bulgaria and Switzerland in their opening 2012 qualifiers.
