The road to recovery has been a long and arduous one for Atiba Hutchinson.
The reigning Canadian soccer player of the year hasn’t played a game since aggravating a knee injury during a World Cup qualifier against St. Lucia on Sept. 2. Four days later, Hutchinson spoke to the national team’s medical staff about the problem after arriving with the team in Puerto Rio for another qualifying match.
Since then, the 28-year old from Brampton, Ont., had surgery — the third operation on his left knee in the past 18 months — and has been involved in a demanding physical rehabilitation regime at a clinic in Antwerp, Belgium.
A star midfielder with PSV Eindhoven, Hutchinson has had to watch from his home as his club climbed to second place in the Dutch first division and storm out to the top of their group in the UEFA Europa League. Canada also clinched a berth in the third round of the World Cup qualifiers, largely without him.
But Hutchinson maintains he is making significant progress in his rehabilitation, and after consulting with PSV officials and medical staff at the Antwerp clinic, he feels he is close to returning to action.
“We’re hoping I can maybe start a little bit of individual training next week with (PSV), and then I can just slowly take it from there. The No. 1 plan is for me to be ready in early January… I should be 100 per cent by then,” Hutchinson told sportsnet.ca.
The rehab process has been gruelling for Hutchinson. He gets up early each morning and drives an hour from his home in Eindhoven to Antwerp where he is put through his paces for four or five hours: leg and knee strengthening exercises, mat work, running on the beach.
Then he makes the long drive back to Eindhoven and just relaxes at home. He doesn’t go out on the town or take walks, taking extra care not to do anything that puts any undue stress on his knee. This disciplined approached has allowed him to speed up the recovery process.
“I’m starting to do a lot more. I’m doing some work on the pitch with the ball at the clinic, running at a good pace, so it’s starting to go good. The pain is decreasing. For me it’s a lot better … and now I’m looking forward to training with the team and get some games,” Hutchinson revealed.
The Canadian’s knee problems have lingered for some time. Doctors did not repair the tear in the first operation because the feeling was that it would heal on its own, and that major surgery might sideline him for a prolonged period of time.
Hutchinson dealt with the pain before he aggravated the injury while playing for Canada this past June at the CONCACAF Gold Cup.
“I pretty much just played the whole season last year with that tear. It came back at the Gold Cup where I tweaked it and got some inflammation, some fluid in the knee… I pulled the plug and just wanted to get it looked at to see where my knee was at and how it was going with the tear,” Hutchinson explained.
A second operation was performed in late June. Hutchinson missed the first two matches of the 2011-12 Dutch campaign before coming on as a second-half substitute for PSV on Aug. 21.
All appeared to be well, and with the encouragement of PSV, Hutchinson joined Canada’s national team in September after being called up for a pair of World Cup qualifying matches. But he ended up aggravating the knee injury for a third time in the St. Lucia game, setting back his full recovery even further.
Did Hutchinson rush back to action too soon after the second operation? Looking back on it now, he didn’t think so at the time.
“I felt okay. I felt good in training and I played some games for the PSV reserves. In one of the games I wasn’t 100 per cent and felt a little pain, but I felt good,” Hutchinson said.
He underwent a third operation and his been rehabbing the knee ever since.
“I’m starting to feel a lot better. In the beginning it was quite tough. I ended up doing two operations in such a short amount of time, so it was a lot of work on my knee,” Hutchinson admitted.
“In the last three weeks it’s been going very well for me — I’m starting to gain more confidence and get that belief in myself again.”
The work he’s done at the Antwerp clinic has been physically taxing. It’s also tested his mental strength.
“I’m starting to believe a lot more in myself and that I’ll get back strong and get back to 100 per cent,” the Canadian star said.
Hutchinson admitted the trauma of having three separate knee operations still weighs on his mind somewhat, but he’s also confident he can recapture his old form in time for the start of the next round of World Cup qualifiers in June, 2012.
“I’m not too concerned about getting to my old standards. I think that will come, especially after time goes on. I don’t envision having any problems,” Hutchinson stated.