Injury Report: Alan Velasco suffers ACL injury
Injury Report: Alan Velasco suffers ACL injury
The injury bug continues to cause harm on the FC Dallas roster.
In the moment on Monday night, you could see it. FC Dallas attacker Alan Velasco collides with Seattle Sounder defender Alex Roldan, and something didn’t seem right. Velasco tried to continue on, but moments later, he went back to the ground in pain and required an early sub 18 minutes into the match.
After a couple of days back in Frisco ahead of Game Two against the Sounders, FC Dallas manager Nico Estevez offered up a grim update on the young Argentine.
“The doctors found out that he has an ACL tear, and now they're managing a little bit of the timing when he's gonna get surgery,” said Estevez. “He needs to do some things before to prepare his knee to get ready for the surgery, but as soon we can, we can we would like to do the surgery.”
Velasco will now be out for at least nine or ten months as he recovers from surgery that he will undergo in the coming days.
“We don't want anything to happen bad to our players,” added Estevez. “We have been there like this year, but we are going to help him to get through that and come back up better and stronger. And it starts with Saturday as a team, giving the best performance we can and a win for our teammate.”
Estevez did tell the media that he believes Velasco will come back stronger due to his work ethic.
“Alan is a very competitive guy is a fighter, and after some hours, you know, in the evening, he was already thinking I have to recover,” said Estevez. “I have to do everything to recover. The first, the best way I could start running when I could start doing these he's testing, you know, on making sure that he can recover really well.”
Velasco is the third FCD player to suffer a serious knee injury this season after forward Tarik Scott and defender Geovane Jesus both went down with ACL tears.
Update on Kamungo and Lletget
Outside of Velasco’s injury, Estevez did open up about two other players who have been dealing with injuries as of late: Bernard Kamungo and Sebastian Lletget. The estimation of both players appears to be very positive going into Saturday’s second game with Seattle.
“Bernard is progressing in the right direction. He’s doing much better every single day,” said Estevez. “Also, the surface (in Seattle) is really important. Turf is the worst surface for everything on an ankle. It's really bad. You know, because it's a very unstable surface.
“Lletget is doing much better, extremely hard every single day, and he's getting that fitness type of level that you need to compete in.”
Estevez did go on to say that Kamungo is even a possibility to start on Saturday when the club is back at home.