Top Stories

Cahill to miss 3-4 weeks with knee injury

Tim Cahill

Photo by ISIPhotos.com

By DAN KARELL

Tim Cahill isn’t one to leave a match before the final whistle. That’s why his 85th minute substitution in Saturday’s New York Red Bulls victory against Real Salt Lake was troubling, as was his swollen right knee after the match.

On Tuesday, the Red Bulls confirmed the news that the club was hoping to avoid. Cahill has suffered a torn PCL in his right knee, keeping him out for 3-4 weeks. Surgery will not be required.

The Red Bulls designated player suffered the injury in the 4th minute with a studs up challenge from Yordany Alvarez of RSL, who was shown a yellow card for the tackle. Despite the injury, Cahill went on to score in the 4-3 victory from a diving header.

On Sunday, Cahill was replaced on the All-Star Game roster by Jack McInerney.

In the month of August, the Red Bulls travel to Sporting Kansas City (8/3), the Columbus Crew (8/10) and Chivas USA (8/25), while host just one match against the Philadelphia Union (8/17).

What do you think of this news? Do you see the Red Bulls struggling without Cahill?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. And yet the league remains silent…if these players are not punished during the game, they should see red for the next game and face a hefty fine.

    Reply
  2. Sad news for Cahill and worse for the Red Bulls. They don’t get as much motivation from the other players as they do from Cahill. I hope his recovery is fast and Yordany Alvarez gets a stiff fine that rattles his checking account. (Suspending him wouldn’t matter since he’s second string and the Gold Cup is over.)

    Seriously, if MLS wants to get players to stop these kinds of dangerous plays, they need to affect the player’s wallet instead of a verbal warning. Simon Borg doing a montage of dangerous plays isn’t going to change player behavior. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2PF9OTkGW4

    Reply
  3. It should have been red, and I’m an RSL supporter…but if we’re revising calls, I’d probably reverse every one of the PKs.

    Reply
  4. This is a tough blow; Cahill has really been the spirit of the team and RBNY plays much better when he’s on the field. Maybe this allows Eric Alexander to tuck inside with Dax and Bradley Wright-Phillips or Lloyd Sam come on as the starting right wing/right mid.

    Reply
  5. I strongly suspect that, one day, when Alvarez least expects it, Cahill will run into him and Alvarez is going to be picking his teeth up out of the dirt.

    Reply
    • Alvarez is a second stringer and with a bit higher of a salary cap he wouldn’t even be playing in MLS. His challenge was reckless but wasn’t part of any team strategy to hurt nyrb. It was largely second and third string team all overanxious to do well against a high profile club.

      Everybody was fouling everybody that game like when olave fouled morales pretty hard. I’m sure he wasn’t trying to hurt his former teammate.

      Reply
      • I didn’t say anything about a team strategy. Now that you mention it, though, this is 2 matches in a row that someone on RSL has come out and delivered a flat out dirty cheap shot to a big time player on the other side in the first 15 minutes. Both Wingert and Alvarez clearly deserved straight reds and those were the worst cheap shots I’ve seen in a while. I have no problem with any of the physical play in the rest of the match but the Alvarez play was clearly intentional and straight up vicious. It was not reckless, it was intentional, two footed, studs up and with an extra kicking motion at the end. He should be gone for the season. There is absolutely no place in the game for Nigel De Jong type idiocy.

      • I think Alvarez sucks anyways. Wingerts was an ill timed attempt to head the ball. He doesn’t have a history of bad fouls ala de Jong. Alvarez is just not in control and is not as good. Glad to have beckerman back.

      • Dude, watch the Wingert replay again. I don’t think I’ll timed covers it. That ball lands 20 yards from them. Either it’s a cheap shot or Wingert suffered from momentary intermittent blindness.

  6. Cahill is a golden god among mere mortals. What kind of a stud gets their PCL torn by an absurd challenge and keeps playing to get his revenge by scoring a goal? He hearkens back to a forgotten era when men were men and sheep were scared.

    Reply
  7. I think this is the same injury that Dempsey had a few years back (maybe right before the 2010 world cup), and he recovered fairly quickly, but not 3-4 weeks quickly..

    Reply
    • They’re already doing what they can about the officiating. Forming PRO was a big step and just like the development of the rest of the league’s initiatives, it’s going to take time. The officials won’t be amazing overnight, but slowly they’ll get better as they attend more and more trainings and get more experience.

      Reply
      • (Ignoring Scott A’s comment completely)… Yes, that’s understood and I agree with your statement OPMG. But for the sake of this particular incident — not to mention HendryThomas in the Rapids v LA match — doesn’t take a UEFA Champions League level official to understand that it was a red-card offense. I gather that officiating levels as a whole will need time (years) to improve, but these incidents are an embarrassment.

    • So does that kind of playing. If RSL and Alvarez were trying to send a message early in the game, it ended up being something along the lines of “Get out of our way if you know what’s good for you, because we don’t care.” What a waste.

      Reply
  8. Disappointing. RSL played like a bunch of thugs on Saturday and were allowed to get away with it by the officials.

    Also, RBNY play DC United on 8/31.

    Reply
    • Alvarez should have seen red,yes. However, both teams were diving all over the field, and both were fouling the crap out of each other. Emotions were high. But don’t act like RBNY were the angels on the field. They were just as bad as RSL.

      Reply
      • Show me another studs-up rake of an opponent’s knee. Don’t try to hide Alvarez’s offense in the rest of the match. His was the first, and by far the worst.

      • Nor was he debating that. He was responding to the statement “RSL played like thugs”, which was false. Yordany’s tackle was thuggish. But don’t try to blanket overall play with one tackle (see what I did there?). Neither team played like angels.

      • FALSE AGAIN. You either know nothing about the sport or didn’t see the game. The first half was an example of defending by clobbering. Culminating with the 2nd half totally classless act of rocketing a ball into the stands off a child’s head. We expected better from RSL.

      • The refereeing in this league encourages so many of these reckless tackles. The only difference between a tackle like that of Mullen on Zakuani and this one was the result which instead of a complete fracture was a torn PCL. There are teams like Sporting KC that are far worse. MLS needs to take a close look at this if it is going to take another step forward. More suspensions need to happen regardless as to what injury results but the level of the reckless tackle.

    • No DP on the horizon and now this. At least with Rafa Marquez this team was interesting. I expect attendance to plummet even more. RBNY has gone from envy of the league to afterthought.

      Reply

Leave a Comment