Longtime Canadian defender Kadeisha Buchanan suffered an ACL injury in her team’s 3-0 win over Liverpool last weekend. Scans this week confirmed the injury, sidelining the Chelsea defender indefinitely and leaving a massive hole on the back end for her European and Canadian clubs.
“I have sad news to share with you,” Chelsea coach Sonia Bompastor told reporters Saturday. “I didn’t want to talk about it beforehand as we just found out the results this morning, but she did her ACL after the Liverpool game. As I said, I’m really sad and I didn’t want to talk about that situation before the game because maybe it would take all the focus from the game and I wanted my players to focus on the Man City game.”
“Everyone in the club is so devastated about the news. She was performing really well. She is an important player for us, but now this is the situation. We are going to support her as much as we can — players, staff and the club. She’s strong and she’s OK.”
Buchanan has been a fixture on the Canadian women’s national team, appearing in 154 contests for the 6th ranked international side. The 29 year old is the latest Canadian player to suffer an ACL injury over the last month joining Liam Miller (Hull City), and Cloe Lacasse (Utah Royals).
The announcement caps off a tumultuous week for Canada Soccer, as the group announced earlier that based on the findings of their investigation into the Olympic drone-spying scandal, that women’s head coach Bev Priestman, and Jasmine Mander would be removed from their roles with the program.
Chelsea is next in action on Wednesday, November 20th against Celtic in a UEFA Women’s Champions League group stage matchup.
Photo: Soccer Digital. This file is made available by its copyright holder under the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0.