KANSAS CITY, Mo. –
Ike Opara
wasn't expecting this scenario, as
he worked to come back from a broken ankle that sidelined him
for nearly a year.
He's not complaining, though – not with the reality so much better than his expectations.
In just four matches, Opara has taken all the question marks surrounding his comeback and turned them into exclamation points. The center back leads Sporting Kansas City with two goals, going into
Sunday's home match against the Philadelphia Union (7 pm ET, Fox Sports 1 and Fox Deportes)
, and has been a dominating aerial presence at both ends of the pitch so far this season.
“I couldn't have dreamed of a start like that,” Opara told MLSsoccer.com on Friday. “I was just hoping to be a contributor, a solid guy back there and getting better each game. I didn't expect to come out the way I have, by any means. But it's a good thing.”
And, Opara said, it raises the possibility of even better things to come.
“As I'm getting stronger and having this level of play, maybe there's another level that I can reach,” he said. “But most importantly, I'm happy with where I'm at – and I also have to keep an even keel mindset, because I don't know if this is something that can happen for a full year, offensively. But I'm excited to keep it going.”
Opara isn't the only one excited by his successful comeback from a chondral defect fracture in his right ankle, which ended his 2014 season in late March of that year. He's gotten plenty of notice for his play – including public speculation about whether, in his current form, he might well be the league's best center back.
“My phone's been blowing up the last couple of weeks, so it's been a little bit of a roller coaster in that sense,” he said. “I've been trying to stay to myself and stay focused on what I need to do, and there have been a couple of times where I have distractions here or there. But for me, I'm just keeping the perspective of enjoying the moment.
“It's been so long since what happened a year ago, and to be back in this moment, I couldn't have asked for anything better.”
Opara isn't complaining about the attention, especially with the focus shifted from whether he can play again to just how well he's playing since his comeback.
“People always want to know how my ankle's doing, how I'm doing, how I'm feeling, what's going on,” he said. “At the same time, that's just the support I've had over the past year from people who have really helped me along through the tough times. It's kind of cool having them share this experience with me as well. I don't always think about just myself.
“This is so cool for my friends and my family and everyone else to be able to witness what's happened and see where we are. It's almost like I'm living with them and they're living through me at the moment.”
And if Opara looks stronger on the pitch since his comeback – he is.
“Sometimes for players, what happens to them when they're injured and they do so much work to get back that they wind up sometimes being even that much stronger,” manager Peter Vermes said on Friday, during the club's weekly news conference. “I think he's definitely more powerful. He's stronger, no doubt, because he spent a lot of time in the weight room. It wasn't really to get bigger. It was to get more powerful. The medical and fitness guys did a great job.”
And while Vermes acknowledged his own concerns during the recovery process, Opara's ability to play at a high level once he completed that process wasn't one of those concerns.
“Look, he was good on set pieces before he got injured, and he was always a very solid defender for us,” Vermes said on Friday during the club's weekly knews conference. “Again, I go back to when the question was: Would he play again? And when he did, would he get back to being 100 percent healthy again? And I think all of that has played itself out. He's strong. He feels good. I think with each game he gets better and better, too, with any pain that he's experienced.
“For him, as I have said to him, his whole world really has to be centered around being smart on the field, staying healthy, taking care of himself away from here, because every player's career is always dependent upon his health.”
Opara knows that as well as anyone in the league – better than most, perhaps, considering this most recent injury and his year-long journey back from it. He smiles readily and often when he talks about this new chapter in his career.
“I cherish these games and I enjoy each game,” he said. “I don't want to say 'Each game could be your last,' in the sense that you have to go out there and worry about it, but – it could be. It really could be. So I just know that each game, I enjoy it, have fun, and always remember that it could be worse. I'm back out here having a great time.
“The team is great, the fans are great and the sport's been great. There's really nothing to worry about.”
Steve Brisendine covers Sporting Kansas City for MLSsoccer.com.
