Jackson Ragen was shown a yellow card. Jacob Shaffelburg went to the hospital. LAFC confirmed to the Southern California News Group that the Canadian winger suffered multiple rib fractures and a collapsed lung in Saturday's 2-1 Decision Day loss at Seattle, and his availability for the playoffs is in serious doubt.
Seven minutes on the field
Shaffelburg came on in the 72nd minute at Lumen Field, replacing Armindo Sieb. According to the Los Angeles Daily News, he was sprinting up the right sideline, was knocked down in a duel with Nouhou Tolo and got straight back up to recover the ball. That is when Ragen arrived at full speed and hit him in the upper body with his right shoulder.
The size gap explains a lot. The Daily News lists Ragen at 6-foot-6 and 205 pounds, and Shaffelburg at 5-11 and 161. The winger clutched his chest immediatly, walked off with help in the 79th minute and was taken to a local hospital. Referee Filip Dujic punished the challenge with a yellow card only.
LAFC have not given a recovery timeline. A pneumothorax, the medical term for a collapsed lung, combined with broken ribs leaves him with less than two weeks before Game 1, which is why the Daily News called his availability doubtful.
Bad timing for LAFC
The sixth-seeded Black & Gold open a best-of-three first-round series at third-seeded St. Louis CITY, the U.S. Open Cup champions, on Nov. 23. Rotowire's analysis via theScore suggests Tyler Boyd could see more minutes, with Denis Bouanga and Sieb as the established wide options.
Shaffelburg's season had already been stop-start. LAFC acquired him from Nashville last December for $1 million in General Allocation Money, and groin surgery in January delayed his debut until April. He recovered in time for the World Cup and came off the bench in all five of Canada's matches.
Under interim coach Xavi Tamarit, who replaced Marc Dos Santos at the start of October, he had appeared in five of six games, including the assist off the bench against Austin in LAFC's only win of that stretch, the Daily News reported. In all competitions he has five assists in 28 appearances.
Ragen's next game
Seattle's season continues on Nov. 19, when the Sounders host Real Salt Lake in the Western Conference Wild Card match. The yellow card is the only sanction reported for the play so far, and many fans on social media, as The Sun noted, felt it deserved more than a caution.
For LAFC, the question is simpler and harder at once: how to beat St. Louis without a winger who had just found his rhythm, and who now has to worry about breathing properly before he worries about playing.
