How Sporting KC’s Alan Pulido returned to his best after missing full year with injury

On a spring Sunday afternoon in Seattle, a Sporting KC team — winless through 10 matches — took the field against the first-place Sounders.

The teams sat at opposite ends of the standings to start 2023. And just weeks earlier, Sporting had been blasted at home to the tune of four goals from Sounders star Jordan Morris.

Sporting KC would win this match 2-1, looking plenty impressive in doing so. That began a run of MLS play in which Sporting has actually held the best record in the Western Conference — 11 wins, 7 losses, 5 draws.

That match served as the turning point for Sporting in 2023, and that rang especially true for one of the club’s star players.

Alan Pulido scored the winning goal, his first MLS goal in 631 days.

Sporting’s record signing missed all of the 2022 season — as well as parts of 2021 and the beginning of 2023 — due to injury. His surgery was a significant one for a professional athlete, and the road to recovery was long and difficult, both mentally and physically.

After that goal against the Sounders, Pulido scored 13 more. He’s tied for eighth in MLS in goals scored and has the third-highest rate of goals per 90 minutes (0.59). His play has earned him a three-year contract extension and made him one of the top candidates for the MLS Comeback Player of the Year award.

But seven months ago, even Sporting manager Peter Vermes was unsure of what level Pulido would — or could — return to.

“I think in each game, each training (session), he got more and more confidence,” Vermes told The Star. “Then, the run that (led to) his finish in the Seattle game really sent a message to himself quickly.”

Pulido’s recovery took more than a year

Pulido’s injury issues started before the 2021 season, with an injury he picked up while playing with the Mexican National Team.

During that season, he had eight goals and three assists through 14 games. Nobody on the outside thought anything was wrong. But on October 8, 2021, Sporting announced that Pulido had undergone surgery on his knee to “clean up some issues” and would be out 3-5 weeks.

He made it back in time to be on the bench for Sporting KC’s 3-1 victory over Vancouver in the first round of the playoffs. Then came the match against Real Salt Lake. He couldn’t turn, couldn’t accelerate and went into challenges gingerly. Sporting would eventually lose that match, and Pulido made a tough decision in the following weeks.

“I spoke with Peter, with the medical staff here,” Pulido told The Star. “And I say, ‘OK. We need to do surgery because we’ve tried a lot of things before this.’”

Overcoming the mental and physical challenges in recovery

After Vermes publicly delivered the hard news in January that Pulido would miss the upcoming 2022 season, the star player went under the knife. For the next six weeks, he was on crutches, unable to put weight on his left leg.

“That’s so that the bone grafts could start to incorporate and heal into his own bone,” Sporting KC Director of Sports Medicine Kurt Andrews told The Star.

Yes, bone grafts. Along with the weight-bearing restrictions, there were limitations to the range of motion Pulido could get through with the knee once he could get back to putting weight on it.

According to Andrews, there was a bit of skepticism from other doctors and surgeons because, as he put it, the surgery had never been done before on a high-level athlete.

“There was the reality that this was something that was going to be difficult to come back from,” Andrews said. “And in order to do that, you had to work your ass off and put in the work for it.”

And that Pulido did, spending roughly 5 hours a day at Compass Minerals National Performance Center, Sporting’s training center. He’d do what physical therapy and workouts he could and utilize the different treatment methods available, from hyperbaric chambers to therapy pools and an underwater treadmill.

After returning home, he’d put in another 2 or 3 hours of recovery work in his gym — 8 hours a day, all with the goal of returning in 10-12 months from the surgery.

That timeline proved to be a little too optimistic. As is the case with most recovery stories, there were good days and bad days. Some days, they were able to push the envelope; other days, there would be a small setback.

As daunting as it was physically, the mental aspect proved equally challenging.

“Maybe when I come back, I am not the same player,” Pulido recalled thinking. “Maybe it’s the start of the end of my career, because I am not young.”

Pulido’s family still mainly resides in Mexico. And while extended visits from family and friends were beneficial, Sporting sometimes had to be that extended family. The club’s efforts in helping him recover from the surgery was part of why he wanted to re-sign with Sporting in August.

But even with that support, the repetitiveness of the workouts and conversations in the facility — while feeling helpless to lift your team on the field — can be draining.

“Sometimes when you’re here all the time, you get consumed with questions and people asking how you’re doing,” Andrews said. “And that can be draining because when you’re looking at missing a full year, a small segment of time within a week, there’s no change.”

Pulido knew he couldn’t let the mental difficulties get to him. He compared his mentality to what he might do in preparing for a game — starting with the first day of training.

“The first day after my surgery, I say, ‘OK, now is the first day (of recovery),’” Pulido said.

He started with a vision of how and where he wanted to see himself a year past his surgery.

Back on the field doesn’t quite mean back

A little over a year from that surgery date, Pulido finally could kick a ball again. He even joined some parts of Sporting’s preseason training.

But there was still another journey that awaited — both mentally and physically.

When he resumed training, he knew what his body should be doing, but he didn’t feel confident in getting his body to make certain movements. Sometimes, when he tried to turn, accelerate or decelerate, he would be worried about how it affected his knee.

“You have a little scare, because when you have a long time when you are injured and you come back, of course you think like, ‘I don’t want my injury to come back,’” Pulido said.

Pulido made his return to the field on April 1 in a 0-0 draw in Philadelphia. He purposely played slow, still battling that fear in the back of his head that he might aggravate something. But as time passed, he continued to feel more and more like himself.

He snagged his first goal four games later in Sporting’s first win in all competitions, a 3-0 victory over third-division Tulsa Athletic in the U.S. Open Cup. The team as a whole followed that match with a stinker of a performance, a 2-0 loss against Montreal.

Fan patience was growing thin. During the match, chants of “Vermes out” rang out through the stadium, setting the stage for the watershed moment in Seattle — for himself and the team.

Back to Seattle…

Just past the 30th minute of that match, Erik Thommy dribbled up Sporting’s right-handed flank, seemingly swimming upstream opposite the direction of goal. He began to drift toward the middle of the field when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of jet-black hair and bright cleats darting behind the Sounders defenders.

Thommy threaded the needle with a perfect pass and found that pair of bright blue and red cleats donned by Pulido.

It was a tough angle for Pulido, regardless of health. All of his momentum was pulling him away from goal in order to get to the ball.

But consider this: In order to redirect the ball into the net, he needed to trust his plant leg — and specially his left knee — could hold the weight and stress of what would be required by the rest of his body in order to turn and fire.

Six hundred thirty-one days prior — the date of his last goal in MLS — there wouldn’t have been a question as to whether or not he trusted that knee. The motion would have been second nature.

In that moment, that movement became second nature again. The play was seamless, and the difficulty of the final shot was executed to perfection through the tightest of windows.

In speaking about that Seattle match, Pulido brought out one of his favorite lines to use in a press conference after he scores. It’s something to the effect of: If he scores, but the team doesn’t win, he’s not happy. When Pulido scores, Sporting is 6-2-3 in all competitions this season.

If you had told Pulido he’d have 14 goals this season after that match in Seattle, he wouldn’t have believed you. However, he doesn’t believe it’s a coincidence either, even if he’s still getting closer to his “regular self.”

“I prepared a long time for this moment,” Pulido said. “The people outside of this building maybe are surprised. But when you know all the work you did before this moment, maybe it’s not like you got lucky, you know?”