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US Soccer announced today that Midfielder Jermaine Jones has left camp and is headed back to Colorado to rehab with his club the Colorado Rapids.
NEWS: Jermaine Jones has departed #USMNT camp and returned to @ColoradoRapids to continue injury rehab.
— U.S. Soccer (@ussoccer) August 31, 2016
Frankly I was surprised he was called into camp to begin with, it could have been for evaluation only - meaning he wasn’t going to play. This knee injury has kept him out since July 4th, when he collided with Alvas Powell of the Portland Timbers. Jones at the time deemed it ‘dirty’ and worth a suspension.
“It was a corner kick,” Jones recalled. “Powell tried to control the ball and it got away. He goes in completely with two legs. One leg hit the ball and the other completely hit the inside of my knee. He knew exactly what he was doing. If it was me or [Nigel] De Jong doing that, he would have been completely suspended. That’s a dirty play and that’s it.”
Of course, Jones is no stranger to the injury bug. He was kept out of the 2010 World Cup with a broken leg and his 2015 season with the New England Revolution was marred by a severe groin injury.
No replacement has been named at the time of this writing.