Partial ACL tear - no surgery

[physiobob]

The ACL does NOT provide any direct structural support to the knee joint. What it does is send information about load and angular velocities to the brain so that the brain can then send messages to the muscles to support the knee during activity.

So if the partial tear is enough to reduce those connections to the brain the knee will feel more unstable. If you have done a lot of side to side movement rehab and change or direction etc and this has produced no results in terms of feeling more in control then perhaps you will need a reconstruction in time (mainly as you will probably reinjure and rupture it). It's a hard call - I am in favor of leaving what's still attached, attached as this something to connect to the brain. But then at a high level of sport like football that may not be enough to play at that level with confidence. The original poster was in 2007 so I am not sure if they will respond to this still.