The injury crisis in the U.S. national team camp

As a writer, you can’t be high on the wishy-washy factor. You can recognize the nuance of a situation but still take a strong stance. That’s part of the biz.

So, here’s a little mea culpa … a “my bad” for some recent waffling.

I wrote an SI.com piece last week about the upcoming (and muy importante) U.S. friendly against the Czech Republic. In a short back-and-forth with my editor, I indicated that a significant theme of the piece would be an injury crisis in camp that may be more worrisome than we were led to believe.

I mean, they came into camp with too many guys “working on their own.” That might be OK under normal circumstances. But with important guys on the side and soccer’s most important moment (the World Cup!) closing fast, these hardly qualify as “normal circumstances.”

But as I began chewing on the piece, Carlos Bocanegra got back on the field. Tim Howard’s little niggle didn’t appear bothersome. Oguchi Onyewu was downplaying a little hitch in his get-along that may or may not have truly existed. Jay DeMerit’s vision issues were surely a concern, but not as much so long as Bocanegra was healthy. Besides, a couple of the injuries were to roster long shots anyway, Chad Marshall and Eddie Johnson.

So I called a late audible and took the emphasis of injuries in camp away when I filed the story.

Well, maybe that wasn’t my best moment. Heck, what did we all learn long, long ago on standardized testing in schools? Yep, trust your first instinct. Talk yourself out of your first-thought response and you’re on the fast track to“C” City.

Now we find out that Bocanegra had sports hernia surgery on May 5, just a little more than a month out of the U.S.opener. Just like that, I’m wishing I had leaned on “injuries” as more of a central theme.

Again, everything may be OK – but things just aren’t as stable as they need to be at this point. Plus, word from camp now is that Bocanegra may be rested Tuesday. That’s OK on the surface, because Bob Bradley may want a little more information to make 11^th-hour decisions on some of the other guys. The problem in the bigger picture is that Bocanegra is a hinge for so many things. If he can’t play, and DeMerit isn’t ready, then Clarence Goodson may be a World Cup starter. Goodson’s rise in the player rankings has been impressive, and he’s not a bad player at all. On the other hand, you’re handing a lot of responsibility to a guy with a grand total of just one match of World Cup qualifier experience.

Funny, we went into this camp wondering what would happen at forward. Now, more and more, we're left wondering what the U.S. will look like in the back.