FRISCO, Texas – A bad weekend turned into a worse week for FC Dallas. It turns out they could wait up to eight weeks before finally getting to see David Ferreira return to competitive action.
The star playmaker, who has not appeared in any games this season, underwent surgery on Tuesday morning to repair a small fracture in his right foot – a fracture that is unrelated to the ankle injury that sidelined him nearly a year ago.
“With David, we’ve been monitoring him for quite a while, and we had a conversation with him yesterday in regards to the surgery and making sure that he felt comfortable with it,” FC Dallas head coach Schellas Hyndman told MLSsoccer.com on Tuesday. “He had the surgery this morning while we were training. Everything will be fine.”
The surgery came after Ferreira spent a nearly a month in a walking cast, which FCD hoped would give the fracture time to heal.
"This fracture is in a bone in the back of the foot that is prone to injury in soccer players and dancers," FC Dallas team doctor James C. Walter II said in a statement. "It causes pain with both running and kicking. While the pain usually resolves with rest and rehab, David has failed to progress satisfactorily with conservative, non-surgical treatment. He and the team have elected to proceed with surgical excision of the problematic bone."
After an MVP award and trip to MLS Cup in 2010, expectations were high for Ferreira last season. But he suffered a gruesome broken ankle in late April, which kept him out for the remainder of the year.
After nine months of rehabbing, he finally got back on the field this offseason, but had a setback in a friendly against Orlando City in the Disney Pro Soccer Classic last month.
“It was a nasty tackle that he took,” Hyndman said. “A year later, he was just coming back and took another hit when we were down in Disney. It was unrelated to the ankle surgery. It was more to the foot. He was really depressed and really frustrated.
“It’s tough for him because he’s never had a serious injury before. He’s always been a hard-working player. He’s always been a little bull for us. He was the MVP of our league.”
The original ankle injury has completely healed, and Hyndman is confident Ferreira will overcome this latest injury and return to full health in a couple of months.
“Of course on the team side, we were really looking forward to him getting back on the field,” Hyndman said. “He was a big part of our success and how our team works. We’ll have to wait six to eight weeks before we see him, but I’m completely confident everything is going to go well with the surgery, and I’m confident he’ll come back 100 percent.”
