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Report: Gatt to miss 2014 season with second ACL surgery

JoshGatt2 FKMoldevsSarpsborg08 (rbnett.no)

By DAN KARELL

Josh Gatt will have to wait another year before returning to the field for Molde FK.

The 22-year-old speedy midfielder is set to undergo surgery to repair his left anterior cruciate ligament, ruling him out for the rest of the 2014 Norwegian Tippeligaen season, according to a report in MLSSoccer.com. The torn ACL is the same one that Gatt injured in July 2013, causing him to miss the rest of the season.

The report states the surgery will be completed on May 14.

“It is a clean ACL injury this time, no other injuries,” Molde medical chief Lars HÃ¥vard Sæbø told MLSsoccer.com. “I think despite having had this a second time, when it comes to performance, I think he can be as sharp as he was before. This is something we have discussed with him.”

Sæbø seems confident that Gatt, who was known for his incredible speed and acceleration, could regain his speed despite having to repair the same ligament on two occasions.

“If he was in his 30s, that is when they lose these things,” Sæbø said. “Josh is in his early 20s, so I think he will have his speed back.”

Though Gatt will likely return to training at the close end of the 2014 campaign, Sæbø and the club want Gatt to be fully fit and are willing to extend his timetable so he’s ready to go next February.

Last March, reports emerged that Gatt had suffered another knee injury and was returning to the U.S. to see a specialist.

The injury problems have put a huge damper on Gatt’s club and international career. He was named to the U.S. Men’s National Team Gold Cup squad last summer before the injury, and has made two friendly appearances for the U.S in his career.

Gatt’s best overall club season was in 2002, where he scored six league goals and played seven times in Europa League matches.

Currently, Molde are leading the Tippeligaen with 18 points from seven matches.

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What do you think of this news? Disappointed to hear about Gatt’s injury? Do you see him recovering his speed after the injury? Expect him to make the 2015 Gold Cup roster?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. In the midst of rehabbing a third ACL reconstruction (same knee) within 3 years, I’d just like to know how to quantitatively test when the ACL is ready to return to sports. There has to be some MRI/X-ray/etc procedure that will tell you it’s good to go. Length of time doesn’t work, because everyone/everyone’s injury is different, and the grafts vary. This time i did gold standard patellar autograft. First two were achilles allograft (donor). Docs like to say “once both legs muscles have redeveloped to equal strength”, but that doesn’t tell me about the condition/fixation of my ligament. How it feels doesn’t work, because it felt great right before i retore it almost a year to the day after my 2nd operation.

    I need to get it right this time. If I tear it again my options are a) life without an ACL b) no more soccer/skiing c) divorce d) all of the above

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  2. Keep ur head up and never look back. I suggest to give your self a longer recovery time,since talent never decreases and physical conditioning comes second.

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  3. “Josh Gatt” is Norwegian for “Stuart Holden.” So sad.

    Funny mistake on the 2002/2012 issue, but big props for all the funky Norwegian letters.

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  4. Gatt must have been some talent if his best club season was in 2002, he was only 10 years old! And he made the Europa league roster!

    C’mon guys, proofread.

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  5. Geez, I remember a time when I thought this kid was the future of the USMNT. At 22, he’s not getting any younger and his repetitive injuries don’t help.

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  6. Shame. One has to wonder if these repetitive injuries aren’t due to athletes rushing back and not giving the graft time to set/ligamentize. By 6 months it’s only about ~50% complete, and closer to 85% at 12 months. I wish guys like Gatt/Holden would give themselves a full year to recuperate.

    Source: tore my ACL recently and talked to my surgeon about it a lot

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      • Everyone I’ve known to tear an ACL/MCL/PCL etc has needed about a year to recover before actually getting back to playing their respective sport at 100%. I know we’re talking about elite level athletes in the case of professionals, but I don’t think that has such a big effect. Seems more like the money involved tempts teams to push these guys back on to the field way too early.

      • the ACL, takes the longest to heal.
        that is why the Falcao, situation would astound me if he actually plays for Columbia.

      • The fact that they’re elite level athletes should mean longer to recover in some respects…in my completely non-medically based opinion.
        Me jogging a 5k in the morning and then sitting on my ass all day in an office doesn’t require intense ACL use. On the other hand, they’re doing high impact, high speed pivoting and twisting. If Gatt and I have surgery the same day I’d fully expect to be able resume my needed knee use before he does.

      • You doing nothing more than a 5k and then sitting around all day is why I would expect a professional like Gatt to recover far faster than you. Very little of the healing process is quiet and peaceful tissue remodeling that happens while you sleep. Most of it is the painful, diligent physical therapy that can take hours every day.

      • none of the people you know have the ability, or luxury to focus on rehabilitation 24/7, nor, I assume, do they have access to the doctors, or medical equipment that Gatt does. Gatt is now a professional rehabber, that is, he’s being paid by Molde to get healthy. The world is changing, an ACL is no longer a 12 month injury.

        Look at Adrian Peterson, and others as evidence.

      • Haha, sorry, that’s all I’ve got. Stu’s first major setback after the Johnny Evans tackle was that a screw came loose and caused damage to his knee- he was then out another year. Asked my surgeon specifically about that. He grimaced and said that was absolutely due to coming back too early and not letting things heal properly.

      • If a screw comes loose in a knee joint, there are probably only a few possible causes… namely not having it healed before playing on it again. So let’s hear your hypothesis.

      • I will do my best to explain myself concisely. I am a board certified, fellowship-trained orthopedic surgeon who specializes in sports medicine. As part of training, I spent a year working with an NBA team, and am familiar with how professional athletes are treated and rehabbed. As physicians, we are supposed to adhere to patient confidentiality, so even if your surgeon has first hand information about how Stu Holden was treated, he can’t legally discuss it with you.

        That said, even if he was somewhat familiar with Holden’s case (and the media reports haven’t given a full description, as far as I’m concerned), it’s difficult to ever state something with “absolute” certainty without knowing all the details. My guess, is that he was probably being polite and agreeing with you, and is not necessarily incorrect in doing so.

        As for Holden… From what I gather from media reports, Stu had a fracture of some sort as his initial injury. There are a myriad of possibilities (femoral condyle, tibial spine, osteochondral fragment, etc.). Each also has a few different ways to fix it and different implants with which to do so. I would doubt he knew the exact fracture type and implant chosen. Sometimes, even if everything is done right technically and the patient rehabs appropriately, complications still happen.

        A screw can cause damage in a joint if it is left proud when it is put in, if it backs out later, or if the fragment that it is in comes loose. Unfortunately, one of those happened to Stu. Besides rehabbing too quickly, there are many reasons why that could have happened (infection, poor initial fixation, lack of healing, missed secondary injury, bad luck, etc.).

        Then again, maybe your surgeon is omniscient… We all sorta have a god complex anyway…

      • There are some public facts here — some of which he is citing — so it’s not like the patient is really opaque to us (doctor-patient diss). His injuries are probably on videotape if you wanted to look.

        You don’t so much prove him wrong as throw your stethoscope on the table in a measuring kind of way and then offer possibilities some of which like dumb luck sound even less rational and scientific than what you just criticized.

        I’d be more amused if Dr. House diagnosed the patient or at least narrowed it down, from what is publicly available, than I am at flashing the diploma and listing possibilities in a way that starts to wander towards how climate science gets denied, limitations of knowledge, what we don’t or can’t know sitting here, etc. Stop the internet, speculation is dead.

      • To Imperative:
        FWIW, I was watching both his initial injury and his ACL tear in the Gold Cup live and am aware of most “public information” concerning his injuries…
        Also, I haven’t used a stethoscope in years…
        My apologies for coming across as if I was “throwing my diploma”.
        I took exception to the comment that someone (Chris’ surgeon) who likely knew little more than us (i.e. regular SBI readers/posters) could say with absolute certainty why Stu Holden had a complication. Apparently I failed in my reasoning as to why. Hopefully you enjoyed my self deprecating comment at the end of my post…

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