David Osgathorp investigates the recent injuries to Owen Hargreaves, the approach to rehab training and asks the question; Will Hargreaves play again?
Having gone through a number of knee injuries at a young age which resulted in me giving up competitive sport I always take an interest in players recovering from injury.
I was really pleased to see Owen Hargreaves back in the Manchester United starting line up 777 days after his previous start – a lucky omen possibly? Unfortunately that wasn’t to be and Hargreaves come-back appearance lasted just five minutes!
What was the reason? This is a guy that plays for Manchester United and England; he’s gone through the best possible exercise rehabilitation over the last few years. He plays for Sir Alex Ferguson who never risks any of his players unless he’s 100% confident that they are match fit and able to add something different to his star-studded team.
Hargreaves cost Manchester United £19million from Bayern Munich in 2007 and was England’s best player by a long way at 2006 World cup but over the last two years Hargreaves has spent his time competing on treadmill’s and with dumbbells and United’s Carrington training ground rather than getting stuck in to United’s opponents at Old Trafford. One of the fundamental principles of training is called Specific Adaption to Imposed Demand (SAID). That means if you want to get fit for football you need to play football, the only thing you get better at lifting dumbbells is lifting dumbbells!
His fitness programme will have been designed in this way with his specific needs in mind. Training would have included specific leg strengthening exercises, core conditioning, and specific stretch and post-training recovery techniques before going anywhere near the first team squad.
This isn’t your typical player recovering from injury though, apparently he was told by Richard Steadman, the Colorado based surgeon that his knees were in a worse state than any other professional footballer he had examined in 35 years! Which begs the question will he ever be able to compete at the top level again and will his knees be able to stand a full 90 minutes let alone a full premiership season?
Perhaps United need to look at a similar arrangement to the one Tottenham have with Ledley King, the captain who doesn’t train and instead, is wrapped in cotton wool between matches. The performances King has delivered for Spurs, and in particular during their march towards fourth place at the end of last season certainly warrant that approach.
What can be done?
In my opinion the main issue with football teams is that they don’t give players the one to one training they really need. They spend millions of pounds on acquiring players but very little or no investment in training them to their specific needs.
Hargreaves has spent the last two years working with the physiotherapy team and strength and conditioning specialists at Old Trafford to get him back to “match fitness”. He then joins up with the first team where they all work in the same way. All players warm up together in the same way, they all stretch in the same way, they all throw a few weights around the gym in the same way which is fine for 80% of all professional players but extremely detrimental to players coming back from long term injuries.
Hamstring injuries are very common amongst footballers. The hamstring muscles act as the brakes for a player when they change pace or direction on the pitch. Every footballer will stretch their hamstrings during a pre match warm-up. This is great from most people but for some players it can cause more issues.
If a player has developed long weak hamstrings and you then stretch these even further you’re only going to cause more problems. Hargreaves hasn’t played for two years, there’s a very strong possibility that his hamstrings are probably not the strongest!
Hargreaves is desperate to play again, United are desperate to get something out of their £19 million investment before he inevitably moves on or retires at the end of his contract but the truth is unless they take an individual approach to Hargreaves training he will probably never complete a full 90 minute session again.
Football is a team game, players want to play, if they can’t play they want to train together. They all need to be involved in the training ground banter and to feel part of a unit. Hargreaves has been on a painful and lonely journey over the last two years and it is understandable that for his own mental state he wants to back involved with the first team squad but I honestly believe that if he wants to play first team football again he needs to look at creating a unique training programme that works for him.
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