Jozy Altidore sprained his ankle in training yesterday. His status is listed as day-to-day, and I'm guessing the young striker won't be suiting up against Australia on Saturday.
This, by itself, is pretty big news on the eve of the World Cup. Any injury, even a "mild" one, is scary when there are only twenty-three men in country, game plans are being laid out for crucial group openers in training, and any loss, much less one of front line talent, might mean going into the fire with a hole in your suit. Jozy is important. This is not good.
The situation was exasperated, at least in the minds of the fans, when ESPN decided to send out their Twitter and SMS update (which I received while out to lunch - not like the local ESPNRadio station was going to report it) with the word "hospitalized" in the text.
Wait, hospitalized? Jozy sprained an ankle and was hospitalized? Who ever heard of such a thing? WORLD CUP OVER!
Only, "hospitalized" really meant "had X-Rays taken at the hospital". This, I can understand. Sprained ankles, especially nine days before the tournament begins, are nothing to take lightly. Jozy reportedly picked up the injury yesterday (Wednesday); so either he went to the hospital shortly after it happened and had X-Rays done to make sure it wasn't more serious than it seemed, or he went today after sleeping on it. The latter seems worse than the former, but neither of them constitute his being "hospitalized".
The X-Rays were negative, by the way.
And so ESPN had an unfortunate choice of word (or flat out failed), gave the American soccer fan base on Twitter a collective heart attack, and continues their reign of terror over our game (I'm kidding).
Just please be careful next time, World Wide Leader. Our hearts can't take it.
I'm off to look for a silver lining. Nine days with no use and proper treatment of a mild sprain might have Jozy just ready enough to play on June 12th. Cross your damn fingers.
I forgot to include this when I posted earlier. Courtesy of Ben Rycroft (Follow him on Twitter) of It's Called Football, a handy meter for all of us Yanks panicking over Jozy's ankle:
