When Paraguay lines up against Japan in the World Cup on Tuesday in Pretoria, Salvador Cabanas will not be there. He is the striker who would be leading Paraguay's attack but for the bullet lodged in his brain. Cabanas, 29, was a player seemingly at his peak when he was struck down in January. He was the main striker for Club America in Mexico, and his goals were a major reason Paraguay, one of the smaller South American countries, qualified for this World Cup. Swift and mobile, good in the air, strong on the ground in crowded spaces and blessed with an instinct when near the goal, he was thought to be days from a lucrative move to the English Premier League before he was shot in a Mexico City bar on Jan. 25. The police in Mexico made one arrest last week, but only of a man suspected of being an accomplice in the shooting. They have named Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a drug baron known as La Barbie, as the man they suspect of pulling the trigger. But detectives have not linked the shooting to drugs. Their theory is that Cabanas was shot in the head for no other reason than his failure, in the assailant's opinion, to score as many goals as he should in the Mexican league. Cabanas' record of 66 goals in 115 games for Club America was outstanding in Latin American leagues and made him a hiring target for an English club, Sunderland. Villarreal got to him first, police investigators say. But Cabanas is alive and doing relatively well. He is convalescing in Asuncion, his home city in Paraguay. He came through the critical weeks because of the skill of neurologists in Buenos Aires, his own determination and, Cabanas thinks, the power of so many prayers said for him throughout South America. But the bullet is still in his head. It is lodged too close to the brain to risk removing. 'Considering the situation he underwent, his recovery so far is indeed extraordinary,' said Dr. Lisandro Olmos, the director of the Instituto Fleni, where Cabanas received care. 'He is going to improve, but times are not precise. With the brain, we have to wait, be cautious, be patient.' Imagine how those words sound to a player whose whole purpose in life, outside of his family life with an 8-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter, is not to wait. A striker who hesitates is lost, and a quick one like Cabanas is at his sharpest between ages 25 and 32. Curiously, yet perhaps understandably, the squad of which he would have been a key member has barely uttered his name in South Africa. He is the forgotten man, a colleague, a friend, a key component, but one who cannot be here. And one whose day-to-day life in Asuncion, surrounded and supported by his family, is perhaps best left at a distance as Paraguay focuses on trying to go further than it ever has in the World Cup. It has replaced Cabanas by adding the naturalized citizen Lucas Barrios, an Argentine whose mother is Paraguayan. And the squad is hoping that Barrios, Roque Santa Cruz or Haedo Valdez might display the instinct to create a goal out of nothing -- Cabanas' forte. Without Cabanas, however, the offense is not as potent, said Carlos Alberto Gamarra, the captain of Paraguay's team for a decade when it broke through on the world scene. Gamarra's teams played in the 1998, 2002 and 2006 World Cups, and their strengths were mainly in spirited defiance against the odds. Paraguay is a country of 6.3 million people, a minnow daring to step up to the stage with its giant neighbors Argentina and Brazil. Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, also nearby, are already in the quarterfinals. If Paraguay is to join them, it has to overcome a Japanese team whose main striker, Keisuke Honda, is in remarkable form, making the much-criticized World Cup Jabulani ball do extraordinary things at his feet. Missing the striker left behind, Paraguay has only three goals scored, but only one conceded to this point. 'The further we can go, Salvador's absence will affect them very much,' Gamarra told Conmebol, the magazine of the South American soccer confederation. 'He is a goal man, and he had that self-confidence when getting to the national team and score.' He added: 'Salvador was the one who defined the matches. It was very difficult to get the ball from him. Roque Santa Cruz does not score as Salvador did, and is often injured. Haedo is very willing and runs a lot. And now the only striker we have is Tacuara Barrios. Once the incident happened with Salvador, I was sure the coach began talking to Barrios to try to solve the nationalization issue quickly.' The silence around Paraguay's camp regarding Cabanas is almost certainly not personal. It arises from the team's need to put all its powers of concentration on the players it has. What happened to its goal scorer in the bathroom of a Mexican bar has nothing to do with soccer, except possibly in the mind of his assailant. Once this World Cup is done, once the players return home, then Cabanas can begin to be reintegrated with his teammates. A doctor monitoring his recovery suggests there will be some residual memory loss for up to three years, but he is impressed with the way his patient is handling that. Whether Cabanas plays again up to anything like his own standards, only time will tell. 