Reasons why Real Madrid should play it safe with their injured players

ings always appear worse when everything is going against you and the same can be said for injuries.  Despite winning at the weekend against Deportivo and the Champions League result in Germany against Schalke 04, the papers are still talking about the defeat to Atletico.  Ancelotti himself was beginning to show his annoyance with this through certain comments made before the Schalke game, insisting that Madrid have now turned a corner.  Much is still being made of the defeat to Atletico and associated events thereafter; but it seems that on the injury front at least, the outlook is all doom and gloom.  If you believe the press, Madrid's injury problems are going to lose them the League never mind the European challenge.

Sure Madrid have some injury problems; every club does.  Two hamstring injuries, a calf strain, a broken metatarsal and a long-term thigh muscle tear to name but a few.  None of these had any realistic chance of healing in time for the Schalke game although we had all hoped that Luka Modric would have met his target as indicated and been available for the first leg in Germany.  So on the night, Madrid travelled to Gelsenkirchen minus Sergio Ramos, Sami Khedira, Fabio Coentrao, and James Rodriguez in addition to the Croatian international.  The game in Germany provided a good indication of how the current Madrid squad will fare without such regulars on the field.

All football clubs have periods where key personnel are unavailable through injury; and as we have said before, this is just part and parcel of the game.  The drama is neither increased nor decreased according to who the next opponents are, and neither is the recovery time influenced by the impending opposition either.  Rushing players back for ‘a big game' has been proved over and over again to be a false economy and often results in what would have been a straight-forward three or four weeks injury turning into a seven or eight-week injury instead.  If players are rushed back because of who the next opponents are and the injury recurs, then the clock is immediately reset to allow for an even longer period than originally envisaged.  As for the ‘big game' theory, all games involvingReal Madrid are big games.

With the two hamstring injuries, it is the very nature of these that gives reasonable cause for concern.  Sergio Ramos wasted no time whatsoever in coming off the pitch immediately after his injury was sustained.  That alone was an indicator that this wasn't going to be a 10-day injury and he didn't come off just as a ‘precaution'.  Hamstring muscle injuries are known for their slow healing properties, and although it could be argued that all muscles will heal at the same rate, the hamstrings functionally are designed to allow changes in pace and to increase or decrease speed; an essential attribute for a footballer to have.  With a mild hamstring injury normal jogging is usually possible, but any attempts to change speed or progress that jog into a half or even a three-quarter pace will be met with pain and stiffness which will eventually lead to protective muscle spasm at best or a recurrence of the original injury at worst.

Current evidence states that the single most identifiable risk factor for repeated or recurrent injury is having sustained an injury previously, and therefore rehabilitation planning needs to allow for this in the delivery of post-injury programmes and return to play fitness testing. I know I've mentioned this point before, but based on the currently available literature, this appears particularly true concerning soft-tissue injuries to the hamstring group.  Available evidence indicates that during running, the hamstring group is biomechanically most susceptible to injury in the deceleration stage and in the early push-off phase before the active leg actually leaves the ground. In other words, a right hamstring muscle will be at it's most susceptible at the moment your body weight rolls forward onto the ball of the foot before pushing off, and then when the leg is controlling the heel back to the ground as you slow down from a sprint.  Additionally, the sharp sudden reactionary movements which footballers are required to perform without having time to prepare for these all add up to an increased injury risk if proper muscle healing hasn't taken place.

Source : www.managingmadrid.com