For those of you who watched the Seattle match closely, you may have noticed Dejan Jakovic looked a little thicker in the upper body. It may have appeared like the big defender has used his time off with an injury to really bulk up his shoulders and pectorals in the weight room, but in fact he was wearing lacrosse pads to protect his recently fractured clavicle.

It’s not unheard of for injured soccer players to use additional padding or protection when returning from an injury, but the specific equipment that Jakovic used is a little unusual. “I think it’s lacrosse pads,” Jakovic said. “I had no idea what it was until I came in to the locker room before we left for Seattle and I saw it hanging in my locker. They told me that they were going to get some kind of padding, but I didn’t actually think it was going to be this big.”

Initially, Jakovic was planning on not wearing the padding against Seattle, but was convinced just prior to the game. “I was honestly thinking about not wearing it, before the game,” Jakovic remembered. “Because I had already played in the Salt Lake game without it and my shoulder was fine. Pete [Calabrese, team trainer] was like, ‘No, you should wear it, just try it out.’ And that was that.”

As far as the impact of the protection during the game, Jakovic remarked, “I wasn’t thinking about it at all, but then kind of towards the end, as the game went on it got wet from all the sweat and then it was kind of heavy, kind of dragging me down a little bit.” Perhaps that was the reason for the late goals from Seattle.

With additional equipment or not, Jakovic makes a key impact on United’s back line, and for the first time since April, he is healthy again. “I feel pretty good,” Jakovic remarked about his injury. “It’s not on my mind at all when I’m playing. I don’t feel it when I’m running or jumping in the air to head the ball.”

For Jakovic, things are looking up in a lot of ways - he’s on the field again, his team is playing much better, and the confidence is as high as it has been all season. In his first game back, D.C. collected their first shutout of the season, and in his most recent match in Seattle he helped United put together another solid defensive performance, holding Seattle scoreless for 90 minutes (they did manage a pair of stoppage time goals to make D.C. sweat out the final seconds).

At this point, the only down side for Jakovic is the side he is pulling for in South Africa. After they dropped their World Cup opener 1-0 to Ghana, I asked him if he was still hopeful that Serbia would make it to the Round of 16. “I am, but it’s going to be really tough now. The loss to Ghana was really bad, if we could have maybe squeaked out a tie – but it was a disappointing performance. And seeing Germany play against Australia really showed that Germany is going to be a really hard team to beat. I’m not as confident as I was going into the tournament.”