Valenzuela trying to salvage his season
Injury-riddled star set to suit up for Crew tonight
For most of the season, the Crew have struggled to create scoring chances and, ultimately, score goals. For most of the season, they’ve been without left back Milton Valenzuela.
A high number of injuries and absences due to international duty — especially among attacking players — has played a role in the Crew’s ranking 24th in shots and 21st in shots on target, but Valenzuela’s health is undoubtedly one of the common denominators in why the Crew attack was much better in 2020 compared to this season and 2019.
After missing 12 games since suffering his second hamstring injury of the year on July 3, Valenzuela is set to return for some minutes in a pivotal match for the Crew (7-10-6, 27 points) against Inter Miami (7-9-5, 26 points) on Saturday night at 8 p.m.
“These last 10 weeks was so hard for me because I want to be on the field all the time,” Valenzuela said. “I try to be patient and make sure I’m healthy and I’m ready to play and I feel like that, and that makes me feel pretty good, very confident and happy to be back. I hope I can finish the season very good and healthy.”
Since joining the Crew at the age of 20, initially on loan from Argentinian club Newell’s Old Boys in 2018, Valenzuela has played in just 32% of games, including MLS playoffs, since the start of the 2019 season.
He missed the entire 2019 season after tearing his ACL in the preseason. Valenzuela had a minor injury in a game in early 2020 and avoided missing time only because the pandemic paused all league competition. This year, he missed seven league games and the final CONCACAF Champions League match with a hamstring injury before making three appearances, which preceded yet another hamstring injury in the Lower.com Field opener.
It happened on an innocuous play when retreating to stop a counter-attack. When trying to make a turn near midfield, Valenzuela tweaked his hamstring and had to be taken off before halftime.
Initially, Crew coach Caleb Porter said Valenzuela would miss four to six weeks. The recovery took longer than expected, and the Crew are choosing to be cautious given his history. But Valenzuela said he’s been training long enough to feel confident that he is 100% and able to play.
“It was tough because I was coming back, and I thought I was getting there. I didn’t feel anything before it happened,” he said. “I’m not thinking about the injury anymore. I’m just thinking about keep training, keep working and strengthening (my hamstring).”
Valenzuela is perhaps one of the main missing pieces to the Crew offense. He has an ability to get toward the goal line on the left side and get crosses into the box, which is the main difference between his game and that of reserve left back Waylon Francis.
Last season, the combination of Valenzuela, Pedro Santos, Artur and Lucas Zelarayan was vital to the team’s success. Without two of those players for more than half of the season, the offense hasn’t created consistently enough.
“Milton’s very good going forward,” Porter said. “That’s a big part of how we want to play is our outside backs attacking. He’s very technical and clever and brings a lot in the final third.”
Valenzuela is likely to get 30 to 45 minutes against Inter Miami before hopefully being fit enough to play 90 minutes by next weekend. The same goes for forward Gyasi Zardes and midfielder Marlon Hairston.
Porter said the Crew won’t reap the rewards of having Valenzuela and Zardes back until they can play a full game. Valenzuela wants to make a difference immediately knowing the Crew need points now.
“We have to start to play how we know how to play,” he said. “If we are confident in us and we play our game, we can get playoff and fight for the MLS Cup again.” jmyers@dispatch.com @_jcmyers