Monday 20 Jan 2020

Not happening...

http://www.football-oranje.com/fc-c...RZZNHpVXsoh3ZYdq3FUfguSRS4ETFXtG1b-J20kWi1SrM

Apparently he turned down almost $5 million, and FC Cincinnati was going to pay a transfer fee.

 

Michael Bradley could be out for as long as four months after ankle surgery
https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2020...ndergo-ankle-surgery-could-be-out-four-months

 

Well that'll make a lot of USMNT fans happy!

EDIT: Why is he just now going to have the surgery when the injury happened during the MLS Cup? I personally could care less what his timeline is for recovery, but how does it make any sense to not have had the surgery immediately following the season, so he could be 3 months into recovery when the season starts?

 

It's possible he was holding off in facing the severity of his issue until he had grasped a new buncha money from TFC. Mikey's a player, for sure.

 

The article says why:

The surgery wasn't scheduled sooner because, as Curtis explained, the club hoped he could avoid surgery and rehab the injury.

"He stayed in Toronto for a tremendous part of the offseason and we really tried to work with him on his rehab as much as possible to try to get him to a point where he's returning to play full strength," Curtis continued. "Ankles are finicky. Sometimes they tend to take long to recover. You’ve got to be careful with those types of injuries and surgery is the last resort, typically, in terms of what you want to do."​

 

From what it sounds like (Jozy's comments as well as comments from journalists that follow TFC), it sounds like TFC's medical staff is not the best? The journalists have heard comments that seem to indicate the medical staff is frequently wrong on the best course for treating players and players spend more time in rehab than they should. In this case, they hoped that they would be able to rehab the injury and avoid surgery, but that obviously didn't work out.

 

Again, that falls on the medical staff. Every player wants to get out on the field and play vs staying on the sidelines. Even if MB wasn't telling them to full extent of the injury, there are tests they can run and the staff should have experience enough to tell the true extent of an injury.

 

The more logical assumption would be the player, club and doctors took what they thought would be the best option and it didn't work out as they hoped. Bradley was a huge investment that Toronto would have every reason to be well informed and get the best of care. Bradley himself was also relatively wealthy, extremely well connected and has a pretty assertive personality.
Medical problems are often extremely complex and even the best doctors can often only make an educated guess about the outcome and not everything works out as hoped. Having the body heal itself usually has fewer risks and thus is the preferred option. I can speak from first hand experience from speaking to doctors that had photos of patients that also happened to be some of the most successful professional athletes in their sport.

 

The problem is that based on comments I’ve seen this is a recurring problem with TFC’s medical staff.

 

It seemed like whoever they hired when Giovinco came in did a great job with Jozy. Then when Giovinco left, there was some sort of bad blood and the Italian trainer dude left to. Jozy made a stink about it last year and I thought I remembered reading that TFC was going to bring the guy back, but never heard anything else about it.

 

I think this sounds right and puts Jozy's comments in the proper perspective. If you've been as injury prone as he is, and something seemed to work, you might not buy the correlation without causation argument either. Especially if you choose to become a full-time soccer player in your teens rather than becoming a full time student.

 

Do you really think Bradley's just going to go along with TFC's medical staff if he has doubts about what they are recommending? Think Berhalter or dad wouldn't suggest going to get an second opinion for their specialists?

 

I don't think Bradley doubted what they were saying and may have agreed with them... My entire point is that the experts in the room, TFC's medical staff, don't seem to have the best reputation based on comments that I've seen from Altidore and the few TFC journalists that I follow. The implication that is being tossed about is that TFC's medical staff screwed up.

It is also worth noting that the post to which you were originally responding seemed to be tossing Bradley under the bus for the delay. I was merely providing a counterpoint.

 

Would hardly be the first time someone blamed the MD for a bad outcome that was beyond their control.

 

My point is that neither Bradley nor Toronto are likely to be at fault. I unfortunately spent a fair bit of time speaking to a variety of extremely good medical professionals specializing in sports medicine and know how difficult it can be at times to isolate what is going wrong. On the positive side I know little more than the common person about ankle injuries.