Volpi: “Seven substitutions and fewer teams in the championships to reduce injuries”

MILANO – The last one was Valentin CarboniInter player on loan at Olympique Marseille: cruciate ligament injury and season over. Previously it had happened to Bremer, Carvajal, Zapata. Piero Volpihead of the Humanitas knee operational unit and Inter team doctor, explains the reason for the multiplication of similar injuries: “It is a problem that has been constantly growing for years. And it is difficult to reduce injuries, both muscle injuries, which are less serious and long-lasting, and serious, joint ones,” he told Radio Anch’io on Radio Rai.

Too many games and not enough training

According to Volpi, the first problem is the relationship between the number of gamestoo many, and the time to traintoo little: “Today football suffers from two or three situations, which are difficult to manage. The first is the density of the matches. We have players who play all year round, even twice a week. But this is not enough to explain. The problem is that you don’t train much. When you play a lot, perhaps on Sunday and Wednesday, you actually don’t have time between one match and another.” There is no time to train: “Strength, resistance and aerobic capacity training are difficult to include in the weekly or bi-weekly plan of a football team. So you get to have 240 training sessions over the course of the season of which only a quarter are truly training sessions.”

Turnover and the seven-change hypothesis

The doctor then focused on the need to study a turnover effective: “The great players, the very starters, often get hurt because they always play. But even those who play little get hurt, because there is a lack of balance in employment. With Simone Inzaghi, a good and responsible person, we share the reasoning: we need to balance the use of players, in terms of minutes, to avoid having players who at the end of the season reach 4,800 minutes and others under 1,000″. Hence, the need to further increase the number of replacementsi: “The five substitutions, introduced during the Covid period and then maintained, were invaluable for the health of the athletes. And I think that in the future it can increase to six or seven.”

The calendar and commitment to the national team

“There are footballers who have raised the alarm cry. The space between the European Championships and the start of the club season was very short. There was no time for rest, mental and physical,” Volpi said. And he added: “We have the important theme of the national teams. As a doctor I say that the issue must be addressed. We cannot leave the players at the national teams every month, from September to November, with changes in training, pace and nutrition. This makes injuries easier. It’s as if they completely changed teams. We need to open a table to review this aspect.” There is only one solution, which the doctor has been proposing for years: fewer teams in the leagues. “A reasonable aspect of sports policy would be to reduce the number of teams and therefore matches in the championships. And doctors should also sit at the table to define the club and national calendars, which I care a lot about,” he said.

October is a critical month

Finally, the doctor identified in October the first real critical moment in the season: “October is a critical month because commitments increase, including the championship, club and national cups. This is why it is a critical period. We have three qualities to train: strength, aerobic capacity and high intensity, which require constant training away from matches. But this is not possible. Have players who lack these aspects play often. And this facilitates the injury.”