I agree about not pre-judging but only to a point. An O'Brien or Jozy you have to be realistic about the player involved. You might not exclude them but you should also have your Plans B, C, and D lined up behind them. Ditto more unknown situations like Steffen, Weah, etc. Re Steffen I am concerned we're headed back to last cycle. Steffen injured = Howard haitus and then no eye for keeper talent behind that, rather the kingly line of succession without regard to performance. Guzan got an unearned role last cycle and is moving back into that slot now. The failed U23s of 2012 are back in their anointed heirs to the throne role despite their mediocrity and how that went. Horvath is exiled and the others untried. Injury would be one of the few situations where I think "club form" is useful. You can effectively zero out the history on some players out injured a long time. You were x level player but have been hurt years. OK, treat you like a prospect. Do you look healthy or slower or limping. Has your production fallen way off. Bluntly, if you were random uncapped player z, would I pick up the phone watching you. To me that's when you need to watch club, and be honest if they even look like themselves anymore. I thought AJ was a precision shooting machine that filled a need. It's been years since he's played like it. Maybe even before the 2014 tournament. But if Adams or Weah comes back fine then that "injury prone" label isn't accurate. You're looking for a longer term pattern that leaves you repeatedly hanging, not just one event that drags. On Adams and his calf, to me hammy and calf pulls are a fitness threshold issue. You get hurt, you're not allowed to run, to get back fit you have to work through a fitness threshold. Until you get fit enough x% of the time this happens. I'd be more concerned if the actual injury that held him out came back. John O'Brien's knee, Holden's knee, so to speak. Mind you, Adams may have to miss March, but there will still be LoN and really all we need to do is see a game or two before September if he is fit, healthy, and ready to start/play. I think it would be overrating GB's efficacy to pretend like he's missed out on us grooving into a system and churning out results. However based on how Holmes disappeared I wouldn't be surprised if Adams gets slow walked.
One of our injuried players appears to be back...……………. 1228751482402623489 is not a valid tweet id But another had to be subbed out early. We'll see what the status is here. 29' @DuaneHolmes can't shake off a knock and he's replaced by @Shinzzaa for the first sub of the afternoon.🐏 0-0 🐶 #DCFCvHTAFC pic.twitter.com/zIcs9n3tlh— Derby County (@dcfcofficial) February 15, 2020
Not sure I'm taking that deal at this point. We've seen a some promise in Timo Weah pre-injury, but Holmes has been delivering the goods this year.
#USMNT youngster Timothy Weah re-injured just minutes into his return to field after six-month layoff https://t.co/tDRIFUYKcQ pic.twitter.com/PBFKNpuf0o— NBC Sports Soccer (@NBCSportsSoccer) February 17, 2020 Thx, Jay!
ICYMI ... DCU standout/US intl Paul Arriola apparently has a partially torn ACL. Details: https://t.co/gcKUlj0yxV— Steven Goff (@SoccerInsider) February 17, 2020 Thx, Jay!
So in the past year, 100% of our best starting XI has been injured outside of Sergino Dest... better bubble wrap him up.
Steffen Adams McKennie Pulisic Weah Sargent Morales Yedlin Pomykal Holmes Arriola Brooks Robinson ....The soccer gods refuse to let the US be good at soccer.
It's terribly frustrating, for players and fans, but this is why you have to build a 3-deep of players you can win w/ as a national team. Some managers treat regular integration as not overly important and some fans are only concerned who the best xi is while the rest is supposedly irrelevant out of elitism or fantasy. We later end up learning reality when we are down to our 8th rb option in a key game.
I agree, but I have never seen such devastating injuries to so many key players on any single team in any sport I have ever watched.
We had significant problems last cycle too - Holden, Gyau, Gatt, Opara, Jozy, etc. So it might be recency bias. I can't tell if this is a US issue or worldwide phenomenon. There would have to be a study commissioned. I'm not going to do it. But sports hernia didn't use to be a thing and haven't heard of an adductor until a couple years ago. We're forming new muscles out of evolution to get injured. That means we're super-capable before we're handi-capable. It's a trade-off.
I am not sure if the number of injuries overall are increasing... that would indeed require a full analysis. I have spent the last two decades studying statistics... it is what I get paid for... but it would be hard for my brain to deny that there is something systematic in the way our players are missing time even without any numbers. I know it is wrong to make the assumption w/o the data... but it just doesn't seem normal that all of the players on Bravo's list are going down... and the majority have missed significant time for multiple injuries. Players get banged up all the time... but our guys seem to go down for extended periods... and again, there doesn't really seem to be anyone that is immune to it except for a player that was raised in the Netherlands. <knock-on-wood for Dest>.
Pretty sure the lineup of just our injured players could beat most of the lineups that have been run out over the last couple years.
This is why you don't just assume development will take place on a linear path; attrition is a real thing and health is a skill
I would argue that genetics have something to do with it.... but when you watch biography TV shows on Sport's Greatest Players there certainly seems to be a theme with respect to how they take care of their bodies. Not sure if that is missing to a certain extent for our players?.? Just seems like the whole "this is just chance" stance is getting harder and harder to believe.
Brandon Servania is out for an extended period too. All he had to do was debut for the USMNT, and he immediately got hurt. To be fair, very few of these injuries that our young players are suffering from are serious contact injuries (broken legs, etc.) They're not "devastating injuries." Over the last 6 months Pomykal has had hamstring injuries, hernia surgery, and is now suffering from other abdominal injuries. That seems typical of what these young guys are suffering from. Weah is hamstrings. Pulisic is adductor injury. We've had young USYNTers get serious career-altering injuries. We can all name cases: Will Packwood, Marc Pelosi, Joe Gallardo, etc. A recent one was Gedion Zelalem. He's never really recovered from the serious knee injury he suffered with the US U20s. That's not what we have here. Full recoveries all around. The truth is that this happens with the player pool of every nation on occasion. Its just that our pool is smaller, so when we have a string of injuries its REALLY noticeable.
If you have a guy who's constantly on the shelf with muscle pulls, does it really matter that they aren't "devastating injuries"? Being out for 4-6 weeks multiple times in a calendar year means you're just as unavailable.
Sure. And there are famous examples of players who just hit a wall with hamstrings. Say.............Michael Owen. I always remember Alexi Lalas saying that "staying healthy and available for selection is a skill." Either way, when we watched Will Packwood's horrific leg break for Birmingham City........................we feared for his career immediately. Our young kids in this group aren't suffering those types of injuries. Yes, missing 4-6 weeks of development time isn't good. But as a non-physician that can't diagnose these things from afar, I tend to think kids can overcome from these muscle injuries. There's nothing about Pulisic's adductor injury that has me all that worried, for instance. Just one of those things that athlete's suffer from.............
Except that, to use Pulisic as an example, he's kind of been consistently injured with random muscle injuries for a couple of years now. At a certain point, the ability to be on the field is what ends up mattering more than the hypothetical of what a guy can bring when he's on the field.
Sounds like our players need to switch to a new diet and recovery training program. It sounds silly, I know, because Lord knows I don’t fit the prototype of someone who would do this, but I practice a mostly plant-based diet during the week... I still will eat meat 1-2x a week (typically fish). Not for ethical reasons. But for gut/heart health. And I do yoga every day for at least 20-30 minutes. Also, I abstain from alcohol entirely. If you would have told me, I’d be doing that when I was 19, I’d laughed at you. But in my mid 30’s and a history of significant physical injuries; I have been forced to rethink my old habits of work hard, eat what you want, and suck it up when you’re hurting. Looking at it now, I pray someone is out there telling these guys that I guarantee a lot of these injuries are preventable if fixed with a proper diet plan and recovery training.
I remember reading the great baseball manager Whitey Herzog's book and he compared some of his current players with Babe Ruth. Ruth ate whatever he wanted, smoked, drank and caroused. His players did similar stuff to what Eleven Bravo is doing and were out a lot. Whitey said Ruth was a pickup truck that could run over any surface while his players were Ferrari's that were great on a smooth surface but fell apart when any bump appeared. I'm kind of thinking overuse is the cause. Too many tournaments at youth ages, too many games in mid teams between team and US national U teams. It catches up to them.
Another player that will hopefully return soon. He had the hernia surgery in the off-season, recovered from that, but then had to leave USMNT camp due to other "abdominal wall" problems. He's missed all of preseason. Per Luchi Gonzalez, Paxton Pomykal will be cleared to play by the end of this week. #DTID— Garrett Melcer (@GarrettMelcer) February 17, 2020