ALAMEDA, California -- Picture, for a moment, Harry Souttar, all two meters of him. Then envision him moving at a speed where he'd be at risk of receiving a fine if he were passing through a school zone, while pouring every ounce of determination and willpower into his efforts. Mercifully, most of us won't experience facing such a prospect, but Türkiye's players did when they fell 2-0 to Australia last Saturday, with the central defender clocking a reported top speed of 34.7 km/h as he anchored a famous Socceroos World Cup win.
Now, any time you're clocking in at the same max speed as Mohamed Toure and Jordan Bos is a good effort, especially when rapidity is much more associated with them than the lanky defender. Then it gets even more impressive when you note it came in a game in which he was a core part of one of the better defensive displays the World Cup has seen in recent tournaments.
Where it starts to get really impressive, though, is that this all came in just Souttar's fifth game back after a 15-month layoff from an Achilles rupture, initially suffering one of the worst injuries that an athlete can endure while on loan with Sheffield United in the Championship. And then it gets downright remarkable when you find out that he didn't just do his Achilles once during this time, but, as he told ESPN, twice, alongside knee surgery last December.
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"I did Achilles on Boxing Day 2024, had the surgery, and then when I came back to Leicester, a week and a half later, after being up in Scotland, my first kind of day at the club, I slipped on the crutch and did it again, so I had to get another surgery; basically the same thing," Souttar told ESPN. "So, that was a kind of backward step, really, at the start of the rehab.
"Then I was kind of back running and stuff come June, July, straight line stuff, and then the screws that were put in the first [Achilles] surgery, the inside one was just causing so much pain, and I was like, 'I'll just get through it, I'll just get through it' but it got to the point where it was becoming unbearable to even walk, so I had to get that one removed.
"Then, when I was back training the following December, I kind of tweaked my knee a little bit, so I had to get a little surgery on that just to sharpen it up. So it wasn't just like one long process; it was multiple different surgeries and rehabs in there that combined for the full time I was out."
When such a series of unfortunate events is laid out in such a manner, it feels remarkable that not only was Souttar able to recover in time for a World Cup -- four years on from staging a similar miracle recovery from an ACL injury to play a starring role in the Socceroos run to the 2022 knockouts -- but that he was able to do so at a level that allowed him to be physically dominant against Türkiye.
Much of this, no doubt, is thanks to his early arrival at the intense, near-month-long training camp the Socceroos staged in Sarasota ahead of the World Cup, one that has the squad believing they're the fittest at the tournament. But as any athlete will tell you, it's also reflective of the countless, lonely hours spent on the on the training track and in the gym when nobody else is watching -- those hours where the mentality of a player can be the difference between a return, a good return, and a great return.
"The physios that I worked with were amazing, Niall [Stevens] and Phil [Pomeroy], two great guys, unbelievable," Souttar said. "They put so much work and hours into me. But also, it obviously helped to have [the World Cup] as the goal as well. I'd have liked to be back a little bit sooner than I was, but knowing that this was a carrot at the end that I was working towards to get fit for, obviously, there's no bigger competition in the world, so I always had that at the back of my mind.
"There were days, don't get me wrong, where I felt like absolute rubbish, and didn't want to do the work, and yeah, couldn't be bothered with it. But you just kind of take yourself to a dark place, and just get through the assault bikes and the heat chamber and stuff."
Helping him through this period -- a time that also included watching on as Leicester City experienced back-to-back relegations -- were the lessons of his previous ACL rehabilitation, as well as a small, but tight-knit group of supporters.
"The club stuff was tough to watch, obviously, back-to-back relegations," Souttar admitted. "But my life outside football was amazing. My fiancée [Liberty], she was unbelievable. My family and friends around me were brilliant. I don't have a lot of friends, but I've got a really close, close-knit group of people that I trust. It's just relying on them.
"I think doing the ACL four years ago, when I was a little bit younger, prepared me massively for this one. If this were my first injury, I maybe would have handled that a little bit differently, like when I did the ACL. But my home life was absolutely amazing. They've got a lot of things for me to thank them for."
Finally reaching his carrot, Souttar was the lone member of coach Tony Popovic's starting XI that possessed previous World Cup experience against Türkiye and, in the absence of Mathew Ryan and Jackson Irvine, became the seventh man to captain Australia at a World Cup. He proved gargantuan, metaphorically and literally, once there, too; recording 17 defensive contributions, 13 clearances, and eight headed clearances -- all of which comfortably led the game -- and marshalling an Australian backline that repulsed everything the Turks threw at them.
"I mean, just look at him, it's huge," said fellow centre-back Alessandro Circati. "Every ball in the air, if it's in his area, it's sort of his. You don't really have to do anything.
"But jokes aside, I'm very happy to have him back. It wasn't an easy time for him, but he's done great, and I'm sure he'll continue to do very, very well."