FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Two days after New England Revolution midfielder Jermaine Jones suffered a left groin injury in the team’s 2-2 draw with the LA Galaxy, the club was still unsure of the severity of the ailment.
While the Revs weren’t planning on having Jones for this weekend’s match at Portland after he was called up to, and then scratched from, the US roster for its upcoming friendlies at the Netherlands on Friday (3 pm ET | ESPN2, WatchESPN, UniMas, UDN) and Germany next week, the injury still stings – especially if it ends up keeping the 33-year-old Designated Player out for a significant period of time.
“We’re still assessing the situation right now,” New England head coach Jay Heaps said on Tuesday. “Obviously, we were not planning on having Jermaine this weekend. We’ll see how this week kind of unfolds. We have some good depth and some players that can step in and play.”
Jones dropped to the turf in the 32nd minute of Sunday’s match against LA. He initially was clutching his lower stomach, bringing back thoughts of the sports hernia that kept him out for the first five games of this year after he had surgery on it during the offseason.
A tough-as-nails player, Jones admitted to playing through the pain caused by the sports hernia through much of last year, so he knew that things weren’t good when a similar pain creeped up on Sunday.
"I feel the same pain that I got before the surgery,” Jones said after the match. “This time, I feel it a little bit more than before I got the operation. Trust me, it's really bad,"
Named to the USMNT just hours before that match, Jones was forced to withdraw from the roster shortly afterward its completion. His diagnosis will hold longer-term implications for both the Revs and the US, who figured to use Jones heavily in this summer’s CONCACAF Gold Cup.
The Revolution – who went 2-2-1 when playing without Jones at the start of the season – had planned on being without Jones during the Gold Cup, and feel that depth is on their side as they await a more definitive diagnosis.
“It’s never good for injuries to happen, especially to a guy like Jermaine,” said midfielder Scott Caldwell. “He’s done so well for us, he’s been a great guy, helped us on and off the field. But it does happen in soccer and we know that we’ve got to go to our depth and we have that, so we’ll see how things shape out as the week goes on.”
“We’ve been without him for substantial stretch this season with his injury earlier,” added Heaps. “We’re prepared for this. I think we have some good depth and some players that are going to get a lot of time, especially with the Gold Cup coming up.”
