^this^ When I read about the original injury my initial thought was that he would be out for half the season. I was hoping for better.... but the Adams situation has conditioned me to expect the worst. It is beyond odd that so many of our best players keep getting injured. At this point one has to wonder if it really is just bad luck?.? I wouldn't know how to identify just what is the cause of the problem though.
There really isn't any commonality between the players, so it really seems like bad luck. Some come through MLS academies, some through the DA system, some through Euro academies, have varying levels of playing time at various levels, and they're all constantly injured. It's bizarre.
This, of course, is the key. The difference between consistently good to great and sometimes good to great is consistently good to great teams have very slight drops in quality from #1 to #2 and can weather injuries better. Sometimes our top is very good, but rarely the fat middle just below the top.
It's the same as clubs that the press describe as having an "injury crisis" when there aren't many or even any broken bones in the physio's room. That kind of injury crisis means that the club actually has a fitness crisis: poor-quality sports medicine staff and/or facilities or the coach rushing players back from injury before they're fully recovered. In the US context, it's the youth structure: too many competitive but developmentally counter-productive games in adolescence that stress and strain immature bodies. Like England in the 90s and early 00s, there's too much emphasis on being the winningest U-14 travel team in X State or region and not enough on technique and spatial awareness, only in the States there's also pay-to-play creating perverse incentives to play more games than even the most traditionalist English coaches back then would have accepted.
Don't want to generalize since I don't have any figures to actually look at but for clubs that do there seems to be a need to do a soccer version of a pitch count from baseball with it going up as players get older. In a recent Dortmund article https://bleacherreport.com/articles...-plans-to-future-proof-their-transfer-tactics they discuss going after even younger players since the best 18-20 year olds are becoming so pricey and out of reach of any but the richest clubs.
Soon they'll make the pregnant wives of former top players sign contracts on their male fetuses promising them to the clubs once they can kick a ball.
It’s embarrassing how poor these clubs’ staffs are. They honestly have a lot to learn from the NFL/NBA.
I didn’t say anything to the contrary? Was just commenting regarding most european football medical staffs not being as strong as the staffs for the NBA teams etc.
The Lille French team has lost its Weah? Not exactly, but it has lost two of its assistant coaches ... https://www.ligue1.com/autresCompetitions/article/lille-out-to-salvage-pride-in-clash-with-ajax.htm "{Lille manager Christophe} ... Galtier, who is still bitter at the manner in which two members of his staff - assistant coach João Sacramento and goalkeeping coach Nuno Santos - departed to join compatriot José Mourinho at Tottenham Hotspur last week. .... "We need to look forward, defend our honour, our project, our game. They have left and it doesn't matter how it happened. But the feeling of betrayal is there and that needs to be digested. And we are digesting it."
🇺🇸 Never. Give. Up. 💪 Send a message to Tim #Weah who is working hard to get back to 💯% fitness. #USMNT pic.twitter.com/0as2x6X3nN— LOSC (@LOSC_EN) December 5, 2019
"Weah is getting ready to come back. I hope that the first 6 months will be erased by the next 6 by his offensive contribution to the team." https://t.co/vRm87E6iKd— USMNT Only (@usmntonly) December 11, 2019
Yeah, they bought him to have an impact, not to be a development project. Hopefully he gets fit, stays healthy and gets a chance.
I wonder where that chance will be. Lille have primarily run a 4-2-3-1 this year, and Victor Osimhen has done well in that striker role - he has 9 goals in 16 and won Ligue 1 POTM in September. Maybe Weah can stake a claim to the right wing? They ran Renato Sanches out there recently, and he is decidedly a central midfielder, so they might need some better options there.
Well it looks like they definitely need another goal scoring threat, with only 21 goals in 17 games and a tenuous grasp on 3rd at 28 points - Stade Rennes is 1 point back but with a game in hand - and Nice, in 13th place, has 23 points...so lots of congestion in the middleish half of the table.
Aside from Oshimen, the rest of their attackers have thoroughly average production thus far this season. Weah should hopefully receive substantial playing time when he’s healthy.
That the #3 team in Ligue 1 looked so weak in Europe is a big black eye for the league, too, let's be frank.