Welcome Back, Cory Gibbs

The lead up to World Cup 2006 was costly for the United States. Not only did Team USA play oppo­nents in friend­lies that did not pre­pare them for the ulti­mate test in foot­ball, but both Frankie Hej­duk and Cory Gibbs went down with seri­ous injuries.

Hej­duk in par­tic­u­lar was a huge blow: The best Amer­i­can dur­ing World Cup 1998 was also solid in 2002. His injury meant Steve Cherun­dolo whose inter­na­tional career has yet to match the qual­ity he’s shown on the club level was counted on in Ger­many. But what was for­got­ten by many in writ­ing the post mortem’s about the tour­na­ment was how much Cory Gibbs could have helped the United States.

Gibbs likely would have played ahead of Car­los Bocane­gra either on the left side or at left cen­tre back. Bruce Arena was in par­tic­u­lar stunned when Gibbs after 90 min­utes of action against Morocco was ruled out of the World Cup and in fact missed a year and a half of action. Gibbs never played a match in the Pre­mier­ship for Charl­ton Ath­letic, dep­site being the first Florida native signed by the PL club: by the time he was healthy Charl­ton had been rel­e­gated and was play­ing out the string in a dis­ap­point­ing Coca Cola Cham­pi­onship campaign.

But now , Gibbs is finally healthy and mak­ing a huge impact as his new club the Col­orado Rapids under Gary Smith push a play­off spot. Gibbs looks like he’s healthy enough and con­fi­dent enough to play for the United States again. With Bob Bradley’s side vir­tu­ally assured of pas­sage to the Hexag­o­nal in CONCACAF qual­i­fy­ing, I believe now would be a great time to call Gibbs into the team and see if he is back to the level he played at between 2003 and 2006. If Gibbs is in fact back, he can be a great asset to a US back­line that while play­ing bet­ter, still needs to be sured up before fac­ing the likes of Mex­ico and Costa Rica.