{"id":40775,"date":"2016-02-10T23:48:55","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T04:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=40775"},"modified":"2016-02-10T23:56:19","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T04:56:19","slug":"heaps-revs-upset-about-kouassi-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=40775","title":{"rendered":"Heaps: Revs ‘Upset’ About Kouassi Injury"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo

Photo credit: Kari Heistad\/capturedimages.biz<\/p><\/div>\n

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. \u2013 There\u2019s always a certain amount of risk involved when a club signs a player in the midst of finishing out his current season to a pre-contract. Sometimes, all it takes to throw a wrench into both parties\u2019 plans is being in the wrong place at the wrong time.<\/p>\n

Call it fate or misfortune, but soon-to-be Revolution midfielder Xavier Kouassi found himself in that exact situation on Sunday near the hour mark of FC Sion\u2019s Swiss Super League match against FC Zurich.<\/p>\n

Kouassi, who was signed to a designated player pre-contract that would\u2019ve put him in a Revolution uniform in July, was carted off the pitch in Sunday\u2019s game with a torn ACL, thus diminishing any hopes that he\u2019d make a profound impact on the Foxborough outfit\u2019s fortunes in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201c(It) hurts because he was a player that we expected to help us,\u201d Revolution coach Jay Heaps said on Wednesday. \u201cBut at the same time, he\u2019ll rebound from this and hopefully, he\u2019ll be even stronger than before.\u201d<\/p>\n

That hope is all Heaps has to hold onto concerning a player he was showering with praise only eight days ago. <\/p>\n

\u201cBall-winner,\u201d \u201cgrit,\u201d \u201cleader,\u201d and \u201csmart\u201c were all terms used by Heaps last week to describe the club\u2019s newest signing, who was set to bolster the squad at a juncture of the season in which they\u2019ve historically hit the rocks: the early summer.<\/p>\n

Instead, the Revolution may have to wait until next year to see Kouassi don the navy blue kit. After he undergoes surgery on Tuesday in Switzerland, the 26-year-old midfielder is expected to be sidelined for 6-9 months, with the latter number signifying the most realistic timeframe according to one particular player who can attest to the recovery process.<\/p>\n

Revolution rookie fullback Jordan McCrary tore his ACL in the summer of 2014, and he told NESoccerToday.com that he hadn\u2019t even stepped on the pitch at the six month mark.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started playing around seven and a half months,\u201d McCrary said, \u201cand I was really getting after it after eight months, and then I was 100% ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Kouassi\u2019s injury obviously won\u2019t make Heaps\u2019 life any easier this year, the Revolution coach empathized with the situation that the midfielder finds himself in. Kouassi was in the midst of leading Sion to a remarkable Europa League run, one that\u2019ll continue on without him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re upset for the player,\u201d Heaps said. \u201cI know how important the Europa League was to him. He helped get that team that far to advance to the knockout stages, a really small club that doesn\u2019t have the spending power of the huge clubs in the world, they were really relying on him to carry them through the knockout stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heaps said it was for that reason \u2013 Sion\u2019s Europa League success \u2013 that the Swiss side wasn\u2019t willing to sign off on a transfer that would\u2019ve allowed the Revolution to bring him in during the winter window. That, and the fact that Kouassi himself wanted to see the tournament through.<\/p>\n

But with Kouassi unable to help any team until August at the earliest, Heaps\u2019 focus remains on the present, and the players currently under his watch.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, it\u2019s business as usual,\u201d Heaps sad.\u201d(It\u2019s about) getting our guys and coaching our guys to be ready for the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Heaps recently told the media that the club remains in negotiations with former designated player Jermaine Jones, who is still unsigned after turning down the Revolution\u2019s latest offer. But Heaps insisted that Kouassi\u2019s injury won\u2019t change the club’s approach in its discussions with Jones.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s two separate things for us,\u201d Heaps said. \u201cEither way, (Kouassi) will be joining us at some point and with that, it\u2019s like I said before, there\u2019s dialogue (with Jones), and we\u2019ll just have to see how that plays out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the misfortune that\u2019s felled both the Revolution and Kouassi, Heaps said that the club will stick by its injured midfielder, and hold onto the belief that he\u2019ll make an impact \u2013 whether it\u2019s this year, or next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cPre-contracts are pretty set in stone,\u201d Heaps said in reference to the possibility of cutting ties with Kouassi. “I think we worked diligently on that and this was obviously the risk. He\u2019s still a player we feel like at 26, will recover well and make an impact at some point.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jay Heaps feels for his injury-stricken designated player, but is optimistic Xavier Kouassi will return “stronger than before.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[891,115,892,1445],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Heaps-1-1.png?fit=600%2C415&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40775"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40775"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40782,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40775\/revisions\/40782"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}