David Horst returns to his old haunts when the Orange play at Portland tonight.
Dynamo back returns to meet former club after serious leg injury
The long scar up the side of Dynamo center back David Horst’s right knee serves as a daily reminder of the gruesome leg fracture he suffered two years ago at Portland’s Jeld-Wen Field in the last regularseason match he played at the stadium he called home for three years.
Playing for the Timbers against the Dynamo, he went up for a ball and came down awkwardly. His tibia cracked after his knee turned at a wrong angle, and he was relegated to reserve league matches when he recovered that season.
Two years later, Horst, 29, is playing arguably the best soccer of his career as he returns to Jeld-Wen Field for the first time since the Timbers traded him to the Dynamo in December 2013.
Top of his game
“I’m looking forward to seeing some old faces and the friends I haven’t seen in a while and playing in front of those fans,” said Horst, who was traded to the Dynamo for a fourth-round MLS SuperDraft pick.
Horst established himself in MLS during his three seasons with the Timbers. After appearing in only three regular-season matches over his first three years in the league with Real Salt Lake, he played in a career-high 16 games for the Timbers in 2011. He played in 21 games in 2012.
Then he suffered the tibia fracture in his second start of the 2013 season, requiring the sixth surgery of his MLS career.
Long before the tibia fracture, Horst had undergone two meniscus surgeries on his right knee, one meniscus surgery on his left knee, another operation to repair a torn labrum in his left hip and surgery to repair a sports hernia.
“It’s just like, ‘Really? Again? This can’t be happening,’ ” he said. “After all the injuries I had, it was like déjà vu all over again. It was really frustrating.
“At the end of my second year (in Portland) I had found some form and some good rhythm and earned a spot and proved to people that I belonged in the MLS and that I should be an everyday starter.
“For that to happen, it was very frustrating and another obstacle in the way to get over.”
Horst briefly wondered if soccer was worth it. He even considered other occupations.
“Definitely, there were times for a couple of weeks where my body was telling me to find another career,” he said. “But mentally I’ve always wanted to play soccer. I’m a soccer player. At my core of who I am, I’m a soccer player. No injury I have or suffer is ever going to change that. I knew once my body healed I’d be coming back and playing again.”
Horst settled in to former coach Dominic Kinnear’s lineup last year, starting a career-high 31 matches for the Dynamo. He started nine games and appeared in 13 of the club’s 15 matches this year under new coach Owen Coyle.
Solid run as starter
He started the last five matches after going through a four-game spell in which he came off the bench in two matches and went unused in two.
“I think he’s improved physically, but I also think mentally as well,” Coyle said of Horst. “I think he’s gotten himself mentally in a place that he knows, ‘I don’t want to be in the team, out of the team, back in the team. I want to make sure that I’m in the team week in and week out.’
“And the only way you do that is by playing well. And I think he’s been on a nice run of form. He knows he must strive to continue that.”