OBETZ, Ohio – Columbus Crew SC’s difficult 2016 season just got a bit more challenging.
The club announced on Thursday that Designated PlayerFederico Higuain had undergone hernia surgery and would miss five to seven weeks of time in recovery.
Higuain’s absence comes on the heels of the club trading away star striker Kei Kamara in early May and losing starting defender Gaston Sauro for four months with a knee injury. Higuain's status makes a total of nine players listed as either “out” or “questionable” on the Columbus injury report this week ahead of Saturday's home match against Montreal (7:30 pm ET; MLS LIVE).
At Crew SC training on Friday, head coach Gregg Berhalter admitted it’s been “tough for the group” to deal with so many injuries, but refused to make excuses, promising the “next guy that steps up wants to do a good job.”
But he admitted that Higuain, who has three goals and three assists this year and 38 goals and 35 helpers in his MLS career, is a nearly irreplaceable player for Columbus.
“The opponent pays a lot of attention to him on the field, and we can move the opponent around based on where he moves,” Berhalter said. “We may not get that with another player; we may get something different. They won’t key in on whoever fills in for his role as well.”
Mohammed Saeid may be the most likely replacement for Higuain, but the Swedish midfielder is battling a painful fractured vertebra. Berhalter listed Emil Larsen, Cristian Martinez and Hector Jimenez as candidates for the role as well, and did not want to reveal whether Higuain’s absence will force a massive change in style.
“We can look to either change slightly or have someone do a like-for-like substitution and hope we can get something at least comparable,” he said.
Berhalter said Higuain had been dealing with “slight pain” that grew worse in the team’s 3-2 loss to the Philadelphia Union on June 1. Higuain was subbed off in the 74th minute of that match, after which his hernia was revealed.
“He wanted to play in the Philly game and he wasn’t 100 percent in that game,” Berhalter said. “He was extremely limited, but he thought he could give a good enough effort. Unfortunately, during the course of that game he just broke down. Since then, he was in a lot of pain. We got it checked, and sure enough it was a hernia type of situation.”
So the club sent him to a “world-renowned” specialist in Milwaukee, where teammate Justin Meram had a similar surgery during the offseason.
Berhalter said doctors described Higuain’s surgery and injury as “pretty straightforward,” and hopes for a simple recovery process.
“The doctor can look at the severity, and depending on the severity he may be out longer,” Berhalter said. “This was ‘medium’ severity, so the timeframe of five to seven weeks should hold true.”
Injuries mean Higuain and his countryman and Impact star Ignacio Piatti will both miss Saturday’s match between Columbus and Montreal. Berhalter said that should make for a much different game than the bizarre 4-4 affair the teams played on May 7, when both Higuain and Piatti notched a pair of goals.
“It will look different,” he said. “Those are two of the best players in the league, and they have a tremendous influence – in their own way – on the game. With Piatti, he’s a very good creator off the dribble, a very good goal-scorer. With Federico, he’s a very good playmaker. He makes the others around him much better when he’s on the field. So we’re going to have to compensate.”
