FRISCO, Texas – When Brek Shea was sent home from US national team camp earlier this week due to injury, it wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone in the FC Dallas camp.
According to head coach Schellas Hyndman, in fact, Shea's trip to Miami was mostly about getting checked out by a specialist brought in from Germany.
“They knew he was injured,” Hyndman said Wednesday. “I talked to Jurgen [Klinsmann] and told him that he’s in pain. … He wanted him in to see him because he had a special person coming over from Germany in the medical field and wanted the guy to see him, so that’s what it was about.”
READ: Donovan, Shea ruled out for US national team
Perhaps the most frustrating part of Shea’s current ailments is that there’s not simply one injury causing the problem. Despite any other theories about why he has struggled this year, it’s looking more and more like the biggest reason for Shea’s poor 2012 is that he simply hasn’t been healthy from head to toe.
“I think what it was, it started off with the turf toe … and playing through it,” Hyndman said about Shea’s original injury, suffered in an April match at Vancouver. “Maybe deceiving us a little bit, saying it was getting better and trying to get back on track to save his year. And now compensating for the turf toe running and adjusting [his body] a different way.”
As can happen with injuries of this sort, compensating for the foot injury has brought on a myriad of other ailments that have taken the toll on Shea’s body.
“Now it’s just coming to a point, a month later, that the knee hurts, the hip flexor hurts, the foot hurts, the abs hurt so there’s a lot of things just going off,” Hyndman said. “If you’ve ever had an injury like a back injury, suddenly your ankle starts to hurt because you’re compensating on movement.
"I think that’s where it is," Hyndman added, "and we’re going to take a lot of time to get him back.”
