Timothy Weah is unlikely to return for French Ligue 1 side Lille this season.
Lille manager Christophe Galtier confirmed Saturday that Weah will miss the rest of the domestic season due to a new hamstring injury. The 20-year-old has struggled to make an impact in France this season, missing all but three games due to hamstring issues.
🎙 Galtier : "Je vais emmener 20 joueurs à Nantes. Timothy Weah est revenu aujourd'hui, il va bien. Sa saison est terminée, on espère l'avoir à la reprise de la saison prochaine. Saad Agouzoul sera opérationnel à partir de la semaine prochaine".
— LOSC (@losclive) February 29, 2020
Weah made his return back on Feb. 16th, but re-injured himself in the process after a 10-minute cameo against Marseille.
The 19-year-old American joined Lille on a $12 million deal from Paris Saint-Germain back in July 2019. He totaled 74 minutes in matches against Nantes and Amiens in August, but had been sidelined until January with a torn hamstring.
His injury forced him to miss 22 league matches, as well as Lille’s Champions League group stage schedule throughout the end of 2019. Weah also missed out on several U.S. Men’s National Team camps under head coach Gregg Berhalter, who he’s yet to appear for since the 46-year-old took over in Dec. 2018.
He’s earned eight caps with the USMNT, scoring his only goal back in May 2018.
With his status ruled out for the next few months, Weah is unlikely to play a role in the U.S. Under-23 Men’s National Team’s upcoming Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Mexico after not being named to Jason Kreis’ preliminary 50-player roster.
Lille are currently fourth in Ligue 1 this season.
You’re like a candle in the wind
The number of big injuries to young Americans seems so much higher than a decade or two ago. The Beasley-Donovan era had injuries but those two guys in particular never seemed to miss much time in their prime. Now we have Weah, Pulisic, Adams, Brooks, McKennie, Arriola, Miazga, and I’m sure others missing chunks of time early in their careers. I wonder if this is just misremembering or if there’s some truth to it, and if so, if it’s just random or due to something specific like higher intensity or frequency of games early in a career.
it’s a bit of both. During the Beasley/Donovan era there was also Armis, O’Brian, & others who were constantly sidelined with injuries. Part of the reason people tend to forget about this is….1) it was a long time ago, making it harder to remember what happened and 2) there is a lot more coverage of of the sport and subsequent injuries today than there was in the 90’s.
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The number of injuries to our current pool of USMNT players is a little concerning, but it is a contact sport and injuries happen. The good news is that right now all they’re missing is friendly matches, and will have a chance to be healthy by the time competitive matches roll around.
Additionally of the 7 players you referenced only 4 are what I would consider critical to the team (Pulisic, Adams, McKennie, & Brooks), and 2 are currently healthy with the other 2 nearing return. The other 3 are players are young enough that once healthy should have an opportunity to show what they’re capable of, and will again challenge for a spot on the roster.
Till then we’ll hopefully have an opportunity to see who else within the player pool are able to contribute…
I remember when Beasley was playing for PSV and that Brute oger looking idiot slide tackled him and broke his leg. That was crazy.
I would point to the frequency of matches. All leagues play more matches now, than 10-20 years ago. The money for coverage of the sport is going up every year, especially in the US & China, 2 biggest economies, which are also growing futbol markets. The demand on today’s athletes to play & compete is definitely greater. 40- 50 matches @ 90 minutes a clip, would add physical stress to anyone. Let alone for someone, who’s not 25. Plus, the fact the US didn’t qualify for WC and hasn’t qualified for the Olympics, in 12 years, would have players want to play even harder for the chance to play for your country. I think, the answer is GB has gotta use more players than what we’ve seen. Even if the player is in a “lesser” league.
Despite how discouraging it is, I still see no reason to view this as anything besides a statistical anomaly. There is nothing correlating these players (besides their obvious eligibility for the USMNT). It’s true that the European season is drawing to a close, and our young Yanks Abroad have had somewhat disappointing season in that way. As Lost in Space observes, the timing could be a lot worse from a USMNT perspective. But things had better improve before we hit the hex
Injuries are a fact of life for Professional soccer players. It is hard to find any player who did not miss a significant part of a season at one point or another in his career. Even guys Like Bradely who most think of as fairly injury-free missed his first season in MLS due to injury, had a spate of niggling injuries he mostly played in spite of and is now out again near the end of his pro career. McBride and Twellman were always sticking themselves in dangerous spots in attempts to score goals and they got the injuries you would expect. Onweyu tore his patellar tendon and missed a world cup and was never the same player. Chris Armas was set to be the defensive midfielder for the US in the 2002 WC but tore his ACL, missed the WC and the rest of the MLS season. Stuart Holden had his leg broken and that was followed by a series of knee injuries, effectively ending his playing career. Mastroeni missed nearly a whole season due to concussion, so did Mike Magee, Feilhaber missed 156 days in the 1008/2009 season. and the list goes on. Players like Donovan and Bocanegra who were relatively injury-free are the exceptions.