The last time Nick Hagglund was on the field at TQL Stadium, he was being carried off the pitch on a stretcher. A coming together with a New England Revolution midfielder left him with a broken fibula and now, just three months after returning from season-ending surgery from 2023, he was staring down his second major surgery in a year.
12 days later, Hagglund would undergo successful reconstructive ankle surgery, have a pin permanently placed in his ankle, and the road to recovery began. Again.
After the first season-ending surgery, an injury sustained at the end of the 2023 season and a procedure that successfully repaired a hamstring tendon, the return to action was assured. It was a matter of time but there was never a doubt in Hagglund’s mind he wouldn’t put The Orange and Blue back on and take the field in his hometown. This time though, doubts lingered. The challenges of another recovery so soon after the first hovered over Hagglund like a fog, and it wasn’t until relatively recently that true confidence in a complete recovery (whatever that may look like) was possible.
But Saturday afternoon in Cincinnati, Nick Hagglund started for FCC and completed that road to recovery, again, and was welcomed back by his fellow Cincinnatians with roaring cheers and heavy praise.
“I thought that could have been one of my last games ever, so just to be back on the pitch, just to be there, was exciting for me,” Hagglund said from the FC Cincinnati locker room with a beaming smile on his face. “I mean, it was just the same as old. Back on the field, it was great for my first one to be at home with all the fans.”
“You know, after our little huddle when I went to turn to face the fans, it was just a cool moment, just kind of a goosebumps moment, like the last time I was on this pitch, I was being stretched off.”
Hagglund had accelerated his return-to-play timeline in recent weeks, foreseeing a need on the backline with International Duty and other health concerns looming but had been rebuilding himself since his surgery in July and participated with the team in the early days of preseason in Clearwater, Florida. At the time though, when Hagglund and the rest of the team departed for preseason, he still wasn’t sure a full recovery was in the cards for him.
That, on top of just having a physically strong recovery befit of any adult person, he would be able to recover to the degree of playing professional soccer in a way that he would be confident and comfortable competing. In an exclusive sit down with FCCincinnati.com back in January, Hagglund said that the trip to Florida was going to be a massive litmus test for what was possible and that he’d find out what he was capable of over the next few weeks. Setting the tone for the rest of the season, and maybe, his career.
“This is a proper surgery. I have a piece of metal that's in my leg, across my ankle. So I think it's about just seeing what I can tolerate, how long I can tolerate, what I need to do to manage it,” Hagglund said in that January conversation. “I thought I was never going to play again, but now I think it’s about getting all the pieces to the puzzle together to allow me to play and I think that's a work in progress.”
“We gotta test the limits, see how it's going, and continue to slowly push forward and progress that way.”
We now know that preseason ended up a success. Hagglund shared on Saturday after his 2025 debut that by the time he left Clearwater and returned to Cincinnati to continue his rehabilitation while the rest of the team continued on to Honduras for the Concacaf Champions Cup, he knew that a return was possible. That he could successfully build himself up and play again.
He knew that it wasn’t going to be easy, but that it was possible.
“There was still a lot of pain. There were things I needed to push through. There were a couple of moments in preseason where it felt like things were going in the wrong direction,” Hagglund shared with the gathered media postgame. “But the staff was really great about taking care of me and my plan, and continuing to push me and be like, ‘it's all right, these kind of days happen. Just keep pushing through…you're gonna figure it out eventually.’”
The return to action was, as mentioned, not as smooth as one would have liked but the team effort of Hagglund and the medical staff to keep things on track won out. The biggest hurdle came in October 2024, where Hagglund suffered a ‘setback’ in his recovery that reset the timeline of his return. The ‘setback’, according to Hagglund in January, was not so much that any new injury or development presented itself, but that the initial injury in his fibula and ankle wasn’t recovering at the speed they were hoping for, meaning that after three-months of recovery and healing, the Cincinnati kid had to continue to wait.
At the outset of the injury, per Hagglund’s description of the experience, there was optimism that the fibula was going to heal early; but after an MRI at the three month check-in, they realized that wasn’t going to happen.
“My doctor called me in December and kind of said I still had a bit of bone edema in my talus, and he doesn't really want that to be there as I start to, like, really pound on it,” Hagglund shared. “Usually, they say (recovery) takes around three months and this was looking more like six months for my fibula to heal.”
“So in the middle of December, my doctor, he kind of said, like, ‘slow down the long game. We can't just push this too fast…let's take a couple weeks off and then push forward.”
Hagglund himself shirked the phrasing of ‘setback’ in sharing this experience – preferring to describe it as just a delayed recovery time. But the slowed down return set the table for where he is now, and seems to have paid off in the end. A rushed return could have yielded a ‘real’ setback (or worse). But thanks to the patience, FC Cincinnati’s local hero returned on Saturday afternoon and put in a quality shift against Atlanta United FC, playing 45 minutes and behind heralded for his performance in that time.
“(Hagglund) is something that we've been missing, that leadership and the communication along the back line at times, and he's been consistent with having a presence in that way,” FC Cincinnati Head Coach Pat Noonan said postgame. “ You can see the impact that he has with this fanbase. So, it was a nice reaction to his name being called. It's good to see him out there.”
In recent weeks, Hagglund pushed himself to make his 2025 debut; playing two matches with FC Cincinnati 2 in MLS NEXT Pro to help build back his confidence. He played one home match at NKU Soccer Stadium and travelled with the second team to New England to play at Gillette Stadium where he pushed his minutes even further. The challenge at the outset though, was recognizing that if he was going to play with the second team it meant playing on artificial playing surfaces in his initial return to action. The unnatural firmness of the artificial surfaces is known for being punishing on players and so playing for the first time on turf meant undo challenges.
But eventually, Hagglund decided there was never going to be a perfect time to return and that if he wanted to play, he just had to take a leap and go for it, even if it meant playing on artificial surfaces.
“I really didn't want to play on the turf, but I knew there was International Duty and that we were going to have a bunch of center backs out,” Hagglund explained. “So (the coaching staff) were basically like, we want you to be ready for this game.’ So I made the executive decision and said, ‘If I'm going to be ready I need to play games. I need to figure out if I can do this.’”
“The biggest thing was there was still pain when pushing off, and it was stuff that I could push through but… you don't want to be defending someone, and thinking, ‘can I push off this foot in the way that I want to and get the right angle?’ I feel like it's a combination of, ‘is my body able to do this’ and ‘Am I able to defend the guy that's in front of me?”
“You don't want to have both of those thoughts on your mind while you're in a game. You just want to focus on, ‘can I defend?’”
Ultimately, Hagglund came to an answer on those things and despite battling through some of the pain that comes with playing on artificial turf, felt confident in his ability to just defend – not worry about himself while doing so.
But even then the need for his availability was touch and go, and Hagglund only learned of his debut starting job on Saturday morning around 10:30 am. Initially, Hagglund knew of the possibility for several defenders to be called into their national teams; Teenage Hadebe, Miles Robinson and Gilberto Flores were all very possible candidates for selection and with Matt Miazga still out on his own recovery journey, the center back depth could have been thin.
Then none of them were called in. So he believed he wouldn’t be called into action yet, and if he was it wouldn’t be as a starter. But then Miles Robinson exited the previous week’s match injured, Gilberto Flores took a red card in the dying minutes of the match, and Teenage Hadebe, (already potentially out to deal with his Green Card status) suffered a hamstring injury. So Hagglund began to prepare himself for action.
“I mean, I would say these past two weeks have been crazy,” Hagglund laughed from the locker room. “We go to practice Wednesday, where I'm doing all the things where I'm starting in the starting lineup, and then Miles says, ‘Oh, he's back.’ So I went back to the bench and I'm like ‘Okay, never mind.’”
Robinson had recovered from the initial ailment suffered in the match against Charlotte a week earlier, but on the morning of the match had come down with an illness. So, after being slotted into the starting lineup, Robinson was out and FCC had to adjust quickly.
“I get a call this morning at 10:30 and (Head Coach Pat Noonan) says, ‘are you ready to go?’ So it was just like an in and out, in and out all week,” Hagglund continued. “I just thought this morning the guys need me out there, and I got to push it no matter what. If I felt ready or not, I was going to go out there for the guys.”
The return to action for Hagglund bookends a 273-day story from being stretchered off the field, to being read into the starting lineup and celebrated by his hometown once again. A story that, at times, felt like it was never going to come true. It’s rare that the twist at the end of the story is a happy one while simultaneously being a celebration. Usually the twist is a rising action in the hero's journey, a conflict that sets up a climax. But in this case the doubt came earlier, and since FC Cincinnati rejoined as a team, Nick Hagglund has been building in confidence and fitness.
This is, though, just one chapter in the larger Nick Hagglund story. Granted the last few chapters have been unfortunately rife with injury, the next step is about continued recovery. Saturday was a step in the right direction but not a perfect day. And in Hagglund’s own words, this is just the start, as, like any competitor, Hagglund's goals have shifted as he has gotten healthier.
“I think I felt pretty good. I've got some good painkillers going on, but ultimately I felt like myself,” Nick Hagglund shared postgame. “I felt like I was just thinking about playing soccer and not really worrying about my ankle.
“When I got hurt, I thought to myself I would love to just practice one more time. Then I got back to practice and was like, ‘I just want to play one more game. Then I got back on the field and was like, ‘I want to win everything,’…that’s where I’m at now.”
Nick Hagglund is Orange and Blue through and through. He embodies the beliefs of the club and has helped shape them through his actions. In piecing through the timeline of this story, it’s hard to ignore that Nick Hagglund, whose contract expired at the end of the 2024 season, signed a contract extension through the 2027 season on January 15 – before heading down to preseason training.
FC Cincinnati General Manager Chris Albright said at the end of the 2024 season, “I don’t know that FC Cincinnati can survive without Nick Hagglund.” The contract extension, keeping Hagglund in Cincinnati as a player for three more seasons, was signed before Hagglund himself was sure he could continue to play. But for Nick Hagglund, no matter the role, he was here for FC Cincinnati no matter what.
“This is a lifetime thing, not just a ‘I'm here for a little bit of time’ kind of thing,” Hagglund told FCCincinnati.com in January after signing the contract. “No matter what has happened or does happen. I’m here. I’m All For Cincy.”
“This club has such a special place in my heart. Getting to be here and play for the city, to play for these fans, to be part of the community, to have a platform to encourage kids. To help people out, to put a spotlight on different things of the city. For me, I wouldn't be here without the city, so this is my way of being able to give back. The ups and downs, every part of it. Even in the hard years, getting to play for your city is something so special. It's hard to put into words what that feels like.”