Knee injury forced Edgar to watch and study game
A year ago, David Edgar found himself in a spot he’d never been: absent from a training pitch to start the soccer season.
Just a few months earlier, while on vacation in Arizona, he’d been involved in a motor vehicle accident. He tore the meniscus and the posterior and medial collateral ligaments in his right knee.
The damage was so severe, he would go on to miss all of what should have been his second Major League Soccer season with the Vancouver Whitecaps.
“It was just bad luck,” Edgar said this week from the team’s training camp in Hawaii. “I was bitter to start. But you have to get over it.
“Someone said to me, ‘Recovery only really starts to happen when you start to look forward.’ ”
Having his wife and young daughter as boosters helped with that.
“(Rehab) did take its toll some days,” he said. “I worked harder than I ever have in my life. There were times I thought (a healthy training session) would never come.
“My wife and daughter ... the old cliché: they were my rocks.”
It was the first major injury in the 30-year-old centre back’s career, which saw him spend a decade in England with Newcastle, Burnley, Swansea, Birmingham, Huddersfield and Sheffield United. He found a new perspective in life, and with soccer.
“I watched a lot of football,” he said. “I learned the game. I watched the game in a different way.”
He took notes. He watched his teammates. He watched what other players who play his position on other teams do. And he spent time doing colour commentary on WFC2 games.
“It was more opinion based,” he said. He didn’t shy away from saying what he thought.
“I focused on what a player should do and shouldn’t. I didn’t necessarily hold back. I tried not to be biased.”
He realized two things doing all this: one, he can see a future as a coach; two, being a commentator isn’t something to rule out, but it’s also a bit different from where he thinks he wants to go in life.
He called his current status with the Whitecaps, where he doesn’t have a contract and is here to prove he’s still got a future as a professional, “a different situation.
“I’m embracing it, I’m grateful every day. I said this to some of the boys last year, you take it for granted.”
Not training every day, like last year because of his injury, “was something I never had to deal with.”
And while he’s mostly focused on winning a new contract — with the Whitecaps or another team — he’s also got the national team in the back of his mind.
Talking about the surprise move last month by Canada Soccer to dump national men’s team coach Octavia Zambrano in favour of women’s head coach John Herdman, he admitted “it was a bit of a shock.”
Now Edgar, who’s been capped 41 times by the national team, has to show Herdman he’s got what it takes.
“I want to be there. I want to be the captain. I’ve got goals and dreams and aspirations,” he said. “If I’m involved, great, but if not, I’ve got to earn it.”
But the bottom line remains, getting a team to believe in him again.
“It’s coming. I’m showing my knee is good.”
I learned the game. I watched the game in a different way. ... I focused on what a player should do and shouldn’t.