“In the fifth minute, he gouged my left eye,” Nick Lima said in the Avaya Stadium press room last month, remembering his Major League Soccer debut for the Earthquakes two years ago.



Lima was speaking of Montreal winger Ignacio Piatti, the first player he was tasked with defending at the professional level.



“I put my hand over my right eye and I literally had no vision,” Lima said. “It was pitch black, so I had a panic attack.”



The contact had been entirely incidental; Lima had been marking and standing directly behind Piatti, whose arm had swung backward to make (physical) eye contact.



But the fact that it had been an accident was essentially irrelevant. This was a problem; after laboring for years to reach the pros, this was Lima’s first chance to make a name for himself on a grander stage, and now simply seeing anything was a struggle. Lima wobbled as he ran for several minutes, his vision still 50 percent...