FRISCO, Texas – The rocky 2012 campaign for Brek Shea officially came to an end Thursday as the young winger underwent surgery to remove a bone in his right foot. The operation is expected to keep Shea out of action for roughly three months.
Shea has been hobbled for most of the season by a turf toe suffered in Vancouver in April, but according to head coach Schellas Hyndman, just recently they discovered that something more was wrong.
“I think about a week ago they diagnosed that there was a split in one of the bones that’s underneath his toe,” Hyndman told MLSsoccer.com on Friday. “I think it took an amount of wear and tear on it to show.
“Once we presented that to him a couple days ago, our doctor looked at it and had confirmation from three other foot specialists that the best thing to do was remove it," Hyndman added. "So we did that yesterday, and from everything I understand it was very successful.”
Hyndman noted that the normal strategy for a turf toe is simply rest, but as the injury kept bothering Shea more than six months later, the team realized that there was something more to the problem that would require surgery to fix once and for all.
“If you’ve ever had plantar fasciitis, it is so painful and people will give you home remedies to take care of it and nothing works … finally it goes away, but it takes so long,” Hyndman said. “This was one of those things that will not go away, not for a professional athlete.”
The timetable for recovery from the procedure has been set at 12-14 weeks, which would have Shea back in the middle of the 2013 preseason. However, having sat out the last month, a return to full fitness could take significantly longer. It will also cost him any opportunity to compete in the US national team's January camp and could keep him out of at least the team's first three World Cup qualifying matches in February and March.
One thing FC Dallas won’t do with the burgeoning star? Rush him back.
“That’s what we hope,” Hyndman said about Shea returning next pre-season. “But the thing you never want to do is push and then all of a sudden he gets re-injured.”
