The 2022 World Cup is 2 months away, however one of many U.S. ladies’s nationwide workforce’s greatest gamers stays off the pitch.
Midfielder Rose Lavelle hasn’t performed since she suffered an obvious knee harm on April 8 that forced her to miss the team’s second international friendly against Eire and certain will not return to her NWSL workforce, OL Reign, earlier than she joins the USWNT in New Zealand, in accordance with head coach Laura Harvey.
“She was actually on observe to be again, then she had somewhat little bit of a setback,” Harvey said Wednesday. “I might love her to be on the sector tomorrow. I do not suppose that is gonna occur. I hope that we get to see her earlier than the World Cup however truthfully, proper now I do not know. … It adjustments on a regular basis.”
Whereas Lavelle has quite a lot of time earlier than the USWNT’s first match versus Vietnam on July 21, her incapacity to return to the sector is a bit worrisome by way of her getting again into recreation form.
If she does not go well with up previous to the NWSL’s June 26 launch date for World Cup gamers, Lavelle may have missed all however two matches for OL Reign this season. The U.S. performs Wales in San Jose, California, on July 9 in a send-off match earlier than they journey to New Zealand forward of the sport in opposition to Vietnam.
Lavelle scored three targets in six matches within the 2019 World Cup, together with the ultimate objective of the title match to seal a 2-0 victory over the Netherlands within the USWNT’s second consecutive World Cup.
She is not the one harm the U.S. should take care of earlier than it contends for one more title, both. Midfielder Catarina Macario introduced Tuesday she’s going to miss the event whereas she continued to get well from a torn ACL she suffered in June. Ahead Mallory Swanson (née Pugh) tore the patellar tendon in her left knee in April and can possible miss the World Cup as nicely.