He's been injury-free for over 2 years now. The 2022 MLS season was his first season without a major injury in his entire pro career.
Santino Quaranta, who sadly did a lot of cocaine, never fulfilled his acclaimed potential. I don’t think anyone mentioned Charles Renken. He was such a skillful young player, whose career was ravaged by injuries. He’s now an academy coach with St Louis City.
I see andrew carleton is taking this well pic.twitter.com/8KM4dKC7cH— Josiah🇺🇸⚽️🏴 (@bed_jartlet98) May 30, 2024
I don't think he fell off, but I feel like Keaton Parks has more-or-less calcified his game and is probably done with the national team. I don't know that they impacted his development, but I do think he'd have gotten a few more shots with NTs at either the Olympic or senior levels if he hadn't gotten side-lined by blood clots in 2022. All things considered, I think his career has been a tremendous success despite "not making it" in Portugal (personally, I think getting signed by a 2nd division club and playing so well that you get bought [kinda] by the largest club in the country counts as "making it", but whatever). I'm just not sure that he'd have stayed in the midfield had he gone to college instead of taking a shot at a career in Portugal. As it stands, a $900k/year salary in MLS ain't bad for a guy who got cut from the ODP. Then again, tall-but-slow midfielders with good ball skills tend to have longer careers (lookin at you, Nemanja '35-year-old-with-2000-minutes-in-France' Matić), so maybe he'll have a late-career renaissance after 2026?