The Sad Tale Of Steve Zakuani’s Ailing MLS Career

The question was only asked because there was nothing else to talk about. The press conference lasted all of 50 seconds.

The Portland Timbers had just crushed Guyanese side Alpha United 6-0 in front of one of their smallest home crowds ever since joining MLS in a midweek CONCACAF Champions League respite from the furious MLS playoff race with a team of backups. For the few journalists assembled in the basement press room at Providence Park, it was the most forgettable of forgettable nights.

So instead of asking about the game, someone asked a question about Steve Zakuani.

The prolonged absence of the former #1 MLS draft pick was growing more and more conspicuous. Not in a match-day squad since late August, Zakuani, a former starter, was nowhere to be found in this Champions League game – even with the team resting starters for weekend MLS games.

Turns out, there was something up.

The mention of Zakuani brought an immediately resigned air over a satisfied Caleb Porter. This coach and player have always been close – Porter coached Zakuani at Akron, where the Congolese international was named Soccer America’s College Player of the Year in his sophomore season. In many ways, Zakuani helped make Porter’s star.

When it became clear that Zakuani would be available in last offseason’s Allocation Draft, Portland traded up in the draft order to get him.

Eight months later, on this gray, drizzly night, Porter said, “He’s not healthy. He continues to pick up little strains. He’s got a groin strain right now, so for him it’s been tough.”

“He continues to have problems,” Porter said. “I don’t know if it’s biomechanics or what, but he continues to have problems with muscle strains. I think it stems ultimately from that broken leg, most likely.”

“We’re probably going to end up shutting him down for the season and figure out the next steps with him and his body, try to get him in to see a specialist.”

So that’s it. Zakuani is done for the year. And that’d be unfortunate enough, considering that Zakuani is a thoughtful and well-liked player on a competitive team that was once considered a transcendent talent.

But with this latest setback – after a season in which Zakuani was given every chance to thrive and played a measly, miserable brand of soccer – it’s hard to shake the idea that Zakuani’s career is ending.

It’s becoming harder and harder to shake the idea that Zakuani’s career ended on April 22, 2011, when Brian Mullan’s horrifying lunging tackle broke Zakuani’s tibia and fibula, leaving his lower leg flopping around around in the Commerce City night.

Zakuani was airlifted to the hospital. He wouldn’t play again for 15 months. Mullan, coincidentally, recently retired. Though he’s one of the only MLS players to win five MLS Cups, he rewrote the first line of every article about his career that night he broke Zakuani’s leg. Mullan was sent off, fined, and suspended for ten games. His life would never be the same.

Neither was Zakuani’s. At the time of his injury, Zakuani was one of the most electrifying players in the league – someone who US National Team fans wanted nationalized and called up, and certainly someone who was in line for a big money move to Europe. Zakuani was young, exciting, and only going to get better.

That all changed with his broken leg. Instead millions of dollars, Zakuani got a long, grueling, arduous and dark rehab process that has seemingly never fully been completed. After working his way back in 2012, Zakuani only appeared in six games for Seattle in 2013, before needing two surgeries to repair a sports hernia.

He then was left unprotected by his only ever club, where he was an unparalleled fan favorite, and was picked up by Portland.

In some ways, it was a blessing – in Portland Zakuani got a chance to start with first-choice winger Rodney Wallace recovering from an ACL tear, and a coach in Porter who cared about and believed in him.

But it’s fair to say that Zakuani hasn’t worked in Portland – at all. His pace is gone. His first-step, his precision, his tenacity, all gone. Watching Zakuani now is watching a shell of a player grasping for ability he once had, talent he once took for granted. There’s something excruciating about it.

Zakuani is making $120,000 this year – not bad, by any stretch of the imagination – but also $60,000 less than he was making the year he was injured. If Zakuani’s play continues to decline, that discrepancy will continue to increase.

Considering that, Zakuani could probably have brought a strong civil case against Brian Mullan and collected a lot of money in damages. He hasn’t done that. In fact, Zakuani has been nothing but conciliatory and forgiving towards Mullan as he tries to understand the injury that all but took his bright career.

He writes a blog, Zakuani does, sometimes regularly and sometimes not, but in it is heart-wrenching honesty and reflection on soccer, life, and fate. He’s a guy you want to pull for, Zakuani. Maybe the only guy that everyone in Cascadia can agree they want to succeed. Problem is, no one really wants Zakuani on the field for their team either.

Despite playing seventeen league games in one of the most potent attacks in MLS, Zakuani finishes 2014 with no goals and three assists. In the three seasons he’s played after his injury, Zakuani has only one goal and five assists. He’ll never be the same. The only question left is whether he’ll ever be anything close.

Of course, there are horrific injuries in sports all the time. Will Johnson, the Timbers captain, suffered one within seconds of the start of the Timbers’ match with Toronto this weekend. On paper, his injuries is the same as Zakuani’s: Tibia and fibula break. But Johnson’s prognostication is good – he’s undergone successful surgery and could be back by the start of next season.

Truth is, with modern medicine working its miracles, few injuries we’ve seen in sports have been as gory or as damaging as the one suffered by Zakuani. It came just as he was ready to become a star, just as everyone was realizing how many possibilities he had.

Those possibilities have dwindled now. In a soccer sense, they’re almost gone. Zakuani’s challenge now is to save his career – whether he’s in Portland next year, or someone else. The challenge is also to make his narrative something more than a really good sob story, not that that element won’t always be there.

There’s no shortage of goodwill or sympathy for Steve Zakuani. There’s also no going back. No cure for what ails him.