Sacha Kljestan suffered a broken nose in New York's Leg 2 loss to the Montreal Impact on Sunday, he confirmed at training for the US Men's National Team on Tuesday.
“It’s broken in a couple of places,” he said, according to MLSSoccer.com. “It was a pretty bad hit, but I think they’re going to build me a mask and I’ll be OK. It will be interesting, but I’ll get used to it quickly and I’ll be ready to go.”
Kljestan took an arm to the face from Impact midfielder Marco Donadel and was on the sidelines for 10 minutes being worked on by trainers as the Red Bulls played a man down.
“I had never seen so much blood,” he said to MLSSoccer.com's Andrew King. “The difficult part for me was that the blood was coming down my throat, so they didn’t want to let me back on the field until it stopped going down my throat and was just coming out of my nose.”
Kljestan played the full 90 minutes for New York, missing a penalty kick in the first half -- before the broken nose.
“In the end, if I score my penalty, it is a very different conversation – then we are back at even," Kljestan said on Sunday night. "Those types of plays make differences so that is why I feel like I let the team down because in my instance, the game is still there for us.”
The Red Bulls midfielder and MLS MVP finalist said that there were a couple of "clean little breaks" in his nose and will necessitate headgear during training leading up to USMNT's match against Mexico on Friday.
