Say Goodbye to Josh Gros

By: Max J. | August 22nd, 2007

We already know Gros’ season is possibly done. I’d be much happier if his career were done. Today.

Think about the following statement:

“When Josh heads the ball with proper form and heads it with his forehead, he doesn’t have a problem,” head trainer Brian Goodstein said. “It’s any time his head rotates that he has a problem.”

Since the incident in Mexico, Gros has worn padded head gear, but many in the soccer community believe it only reduces the force of impact by a small percentage.

So what we’re saying is that every time the ball comes at Josh from a wierd angle or he has to rush a header out of harm’s way or he simply doesn’t attack the ball correctly, he’s now risking a concussion. Every. Single. Time. It’s one thing to play like that when your risk is rare, but those kind of plays can and do come up multiple times in every game. And even if the risk is being exaggerated, it takes only one random ball to move directly to the worst case scenario. Josh, no matter how much he’d be missed, needs to choose a productive life over MLS.

In other news, I’m not confident about today’s game (surprise, surprise). The Metroscum have the look of a team getting its shit together about them, while we have a suddenly weakened left side. Erpen isn’t here this time to mark Angel out of the game, and I’d challenge anyone to say that Vanney or Bos or McTavish are likely to have the speed to do so as effectively in this meeting. The lineup I think we’ll need is one Tommy isn’t likely to play, putting Fred at A-mid with Olsen and Moose/Mediate on the flanks with Christian up top, taking advantage of all the legs we have left to stop Angel, Altidore, Cletus, etc. while keeping all our effective firepower on the field and pressuring constantly. So I’ll listen to this one with a lot of trepidation, and I think a draw of any kind will be a solid result. We can win, but it will be exceedingly difficult and I certainly wouldn’t bank on it.