Dom Dwyer Undergoes Surgery: What Does it Mean?

News came out yesterday that Dom Dwyer had undergone surgery. The thought of Sporting Kansas City’s star player having unexpected surgery likely sent everyone’s hearts into their throats.

Well, let your heart move back into your chest because according to the team this surgery was just to remove bone spurs from Dwyer’s right ankle. He obviously was able to finish the season and seemed perfectly healthy from match to match. He even scored more goals from the run of play than he did in 2014 when he put in a collective 22 goals. The difference between that year and 2016’s 16 goals was that he didn’t take the penalty kicks this season (that was left to Benny Feilhaber who was perfect).

If you are still a little concerned, take a look at this IG post that Dwyer himself put out and tell me that doesn’t look like a guy who isn’t worried.

Something worth noting in that post is that Dwyer added the hashtag 30 to the end. For the last two seasons that has been Dwyer’s target for goals scored. He has fallen short, but that could partially be to a lack of a secondary scoring threat on Sporting KC (which is a topic for another day).

I for one, believe this story is actually good news. If Dwyer is going to need the very short MLS offseason to recover from surgery then it seems far less likely that he’ll be transferred overseas. For those that don’t recall, there were strong rumors that Dwyer was being transferred to the Greek club Olympiacos for €4.5 million (or maybe it was $3 million).

It turned out that it didn’t happen, probably partially because there was no viable option to take over his job. At the time only Diego Rubio was on the bench behind Dwyer and he was just on loan. That loan has since been made permanent. Rubio has also since torn his ACL and will likely miss a good portion of the 2017 season.

With Rubio out and maybe just Cameron Porter available as a potential center forward (or maybe Daniel Salloi if he comes back from his loan) it seems Dwyer will be more important than ever to keep around. It also doesn’t hurt that most of the world play their season from the fall through the spring so they may be less inclined to pay big bucks for Dwyer in the January transfer window. If SKC were to sell, they’d at least want as much as Olympiacos offered last season. Dwyer is still relatively young at just 26-years-old.

The likelihood remains he’ll be sold at some point, but he should be around for at least another half-season. He is one of the all-time goal scoring leaders for Sporting KC and he could catch Preki if he keeps up this pace. He only has three full seasons under his belt and he’s already moved into second all-time.

Let’s hope he sticks around so that his wife sticks around with FC Kansas City. She has yet to debut due to the birth of the couples first child. Here is to two healthy Dwyer’s playing for their respective Kansas City clubs in 2017.