Healing Charlie Davies Says He'll Be Back for World Cup

Battered by a horrific car crash just three months ago that appeared to leave his World Cup dream in tatters and his soccer future in doubt, Charlie Davies now says a return to the national team by this summer will be "easy" and that he hopes to be back training with Sochaux before the end of the French season.

"The World Cup is easy for me to be back for. I want to get back to France and I don't just want to get back. I want to be good," he told ESPN on Monday. "I don't want to be that guy just to make the team and just sit there. I want to be back and starting and scoring, playing well and doing the things I know I can do.

"People haven't seen the progress I've made and maybe they don't know the kind of person I am and the motivation and new appreciation for being able to play that I have."

ESPN reported that Davies' broken right femur and tibia, left elbow and face, as well as a torn PCL in his left knee, have healed. He has a "foot-long" scar on his stomach from the surgery required to repair his torn bladder and another scar running across the top of his head from the incision doctors made when they "peeled his face off down to his chin" in order to fix his "shattered" face.

He has regained the 15 pounds he lost and has a seventh and final surgery scheduled to remove screws and a plate from his left elbow. He is, according to ESPN, "jogging at a good rate and working on agility drills that would have seemed impossible just weeks earlier."

Jim Hashimoto, a former U.S. national team trainer handling Davies' rehab in Delaware, said the forward "is pretty much light years ahead of where anybody would tell you he should be."

In a poignant portion of the story, Davies admitted to questioning the fateful decisions he made that night. "I couldn't sleep for two month. My mind would be racing, just thinking about how it happened and how I let this happen. How did I survive? Why did I survive? Why did I let the girl drive me home? Why couldn't I have taken a cab?" And perhaps most importantly of all, "What do I need to do to change and be a better person?"

If you weren't already rooting for Davies, if you questioned the maturity of a man who stayed out past curfew two nights before a World Cup qualifier and grabbed an early-morning ride from a woman who'd been drinking, the manner with which he's tackling both his emotional and physical rehabilitation should convince you to stand resolutely in his corner.

He said the discussion about the national team's need to find his replacement this summer was a motivation.

"These people don't know," he said. "They don't know me, and if they just knew me alone, let alone the determination and will I have now, you guys don't know. When I tell people I'm doing agility on the ladder and I'm running on the treadmill, people are like, 'No way.' They tell me, 'If you're back, this is the greatest comeback in the history of sports.' It feels good when I hear all this talk because I'm going to be able to play two months in France. I plan on making a difference at the World Cup."

Davies obviously knew something all along that the rest of us were reluctant to entertain -- that hoping for his quick recovery and his place in South Africa wasn't a waste of time or emotion. It now seems that it's a very realistic possibility, and certainly would constitute a significant victory before the first ball is kicked on June 12 in Rustenberg. For the rest of Ives Galarcep's excellent interview with Davies, click here.