KANSAS CITY, Mo. – When he comes home from work these days, Chance Myers is a little more fatigued and sore than he's been in quite some time.
That's just how he wants it, as Sporting Kansas City's veteran right back enters the last month – give or take – of his recovery from the ruptured left Achilles tendon that shut down his 2014 season in late May.
“It's exciting to be back out there,” Myers told MLSsoccer.com late last week. “It's fun to push myself. It's fun to feel winded, and tired, and all the pain that goes with the comeback.”
Still, the process remains a gradual one. Manager Peter Vermes has set a target date of June 1 for Myers' return to action, and he's sticking with that for now.
“He's not going full contact, but he's pretty close,” Vermes told reporters during last week's club news conference. “Where he's at, it's a great place. It's really just week after week, we get more comfortable and so does he. It's not going to be like one day where you go from no contact to full contact. It's kind of a progression, and we'll just keep feeling that out as he becomes more and more comfortable.”
Myers, whose latest step has seen him play a neutral, low-to-no-contact role in small-side training games, acknowledges the need to work back in careful stages – but that isn't always easy, he said.
“They're always asking if I can do things,” he said, “but also telling me, 'Yeah, you're done. You can't push yourself any more. You've already done a lot today.' So it's a little push-and-shove, but it's fine. There's always times when you want to do more.”
Those times come up most often in the training games, he said.
“Even being the free guy, being neutral in some games, I've lost the ball and accidentally had to tackle,” he said. “You've got to stop yourself from going too crazy, but the contact's going to come. That's fine. I'm ready for it.”
- Get more SKC news at SportingKC.com
And as Myers works back into a full training routine, moving from straight-line running and controlled movements with a ball to the twists and turns and quick reactions of the game itself (one of the reasons for that post-training soreness), he has looked solid during team workouts.
“He doesn't look like the injury's really ailing him any more,” midfielder Benny Feilhaber said later in last week's news conference. “It's not slowing him down. Obviously, he wants to work back in, and he doesn't want to go from what he is now to full go in a day. But it doesn't look like it's bothering him. It won't surprise me if, when he does finally get back, that he's the player he always has been.”
Steve Brisendine covers Sporting Kansas City for MLSsoccer.com.
