Back from the Brink: D.C.'s oft-injured Ben Olsen aims to re-establish his career and ensure he isn't considered U.S. soccer's great lost talent - Interview

Soccer Digest, June-July, 2003 by Marc Connolly

WHEN HEALTHY, Ben Olsen is one of the best midfielders in MLS. When healthy, Olsen is not only a given to be brought into the U.S. national team, but he is usually. One of the first names coach Bruce Arena pencils in to his starting XI. Unfortunately for Olsen, he has rarely been healthy over the past three years.

Four operations on Olsen's right ankle have left him with, as one member of D.C. United puts it, "the ankle of a 55-year-old man." Those operations also denied him three important years during what should be the prime of his career, the chance to play in a World Cup, and an opportunity to make a full-time move to England.

In a sense, he's starting all over again, trying to regain the can't-miss form he first showed when he burst onto the MLS scene as its Rookie of the Year in 1998 and continued as a 21-year-old hotshot on the national team. "It's one of the saddest stories in modern American soccer history," says United coach Ray Hudson. "You've got a great, energetic talent who has been decimated by a terrible injury. The boy has been savagely robbed."

"Savage" might describe the looks of Olsen's ankle after playing 74 minutes in a preseason scrimmage against the Columbus Crew. As Olsen sits in a cramped locker room in Miami's Orange Bowl with an ice bucket to his left, he seems to have accepted the ailment as part of his life and not as something that will continually hinder his career. "It's pretty good," he says of his ankle. "When it's sore, I put ice on it and take a full dosage of ibuprofen."

It's not that simple, though. For Olsen, it's not just about feeling good for half of the time--it's about being healed once and for all and getting back on the path he once tread. Now in his fifth season with D.C. (Olsen missed all of 2001 after fracturing his ankle while on loan to Nottingham Forest in England)--and with a full slate of national team friendlies and tournaments this summer--the 25-year-old knows that, injury or no injury, it's time to make the transition from promising young star to wise veteran.

"I don't want to give him any false illusions," says Hudson. "It would be easy to say that he's going to be as good as he once was or that he's going to have a breakout year. He's at the point in his career that it's either going to be a break-out year or this is probably as good as we're going to see Benny become. We all hope that he can do it, but don't think that this is going to be a fairy tale come true. It might not work out. That's the extent of the debilitating injury that he's got."

It's an injury that transformed Olsen's way of thinking. His patience grew, as did his perspective. Every time he has doubted himself or has had a moment of self pity, he reminded himself that it's part of being a soccer player. He admits, however, to feeling slightly envious while watching the World Cup and seeing his friends on the national team sparkle on the international stage--how could he not? "But then I'd say to myself that I'm not going to be that guy," he says. "Those thoughts quickly turned to ones of pride. I got so into being a fan. That helped me get through."

What also helped was a call from U.S. coach Bruce Arena a few days after the World Cup. "It was very special," says Olsen. "It was a very busy time for him, and it felt good to know he was thinking about me."

Olsen and Arena enjoy a relationship that goes far beyond the usual player-coach dynamic. The ties between the two men not only go back to the University of Virginia and D.C. United, but also as housemates. Arena's family took in Olsen when he was a 20-year-old rookie with D.C. So if anyone was ever going to believe in his comeback, it was Arena, which he demonstrated by starting him against El Salvador in mid-November.

Against El Salvador, Olsen raced up and down the left flank freely and was one of the top players on the field--just as he had been for D.C. against Tottenham Spurs on an offseason trip to England. Olsen even scored the first goal in the 2-0 victory over El Salvador. It seemed as though his hardships were over. But as Hudson says, this isn't a fairy tale yet. "We were ecstatic coming out of the Spurs game," he says. "We thought, 'That's it, he's right on the launch pad now.' Since then, there's been a bit of a regression."

The setback happened in January when Arena called Olsen into training camp. Fitness was Stressed throughout two weeks of two-a-days, and Olsen's body took a beating. "It was a lot to ask right off the bat," he says. "I struggled, no doubt about it."

Arena used Olsen in friendlies against Canada and Argentina, but sparingly--and as a center midfielder, because he didn't trust Olsen's fitness level on the flanks.

After the Argentina match in February, Olsen was sent home to get rest and see his doctors. That's when United trainer Brian Goldstein decided to try something new in addition to using heat and ultra sound mobilization to increase the circulation in his lower leg and right ankle. "We did Hylagan injections to lubricate the ankle joint," says Goldstein. "You do a series of five, one per week."