Chelsea: Kevin de Bruyne with obvious warning about rushing back to play

Kevin de Bruyne warned against a spike in injuries if players do not have the proper lead time before returning to play. He’s right, but it should be so obvious it doesn’t take a one-time Chelsea player to tell us.

Hopefully The Telegraph got a passing detail wrong in their article about Kevin de Bruyne’s comments to HLN. “De Bruyne has not kicked a ball since City’s Carabao Cup final win over Aston Villa on March 1…” they write. If that’s the case, Manchester City’s coaching staff needs to have a stern video chat with De Bruyne to find out why he’s not staying up on his at-home technical training programme, and they should verify he is doing his physical conditioning, as well.

The conditioning aspect of the shutdown is de Bruyne’s greater concern. He said players will need three to four weeks of training before they can safely return to play. If the league “restart[s] immediately,” there will be an epidemic (what, to soon?) of injuries across the Premier League.

De Bruyne’s timeline aligns with what fitness and conditioning coaches have said elsewhere. Grimsby Town’s Callum Lester said “we figured every week off would put the players a week behind. With the break going longer, we can get them back to full fitness and ready to go in a max of four weeks.”

The former Chelsea winger’s concern also echoes Bristol City’s Head of Fitness and Conditioning Patrick Orme: “We can hopefully keep the hamstrings conditioned to cope with sprinting” by having the players approach maximum speed once a week on their own.

For all the poorly reasoned decisions the Premier League or other governing bodies could make, rushing the players make to the pitch seems rather far-fetched.

You don’t have to be a player, coach or physio to know that a player cannot go from a month or more of training by himself in his backyard to playing competitive games without a serious diminution in physical capabilities and increased risk of injury unless he has a dedicated training period beforehand. Although I can imagine Paul Merson or Graeme Souness giving a good “back in my day” anecdote about it. Aside from their ilk, anyone who watches a team through preseason knows how this goes: the players come back looking a bit schlubby, their first few games are somewhat entertainingly craptastic but, after four weeks or so, they look like Chelsea or whoever else again.

If nothing else, the logistics and bureaucracy of the post-coronavirus resumption of play will give players sufficient time to build their fitness.

There will be at least a week of heavy rumours before all the necessary stakeholders convene to determine the proper way of screening players just to re-enter the training ground. That will give the players and fitness coaches a period to ramp up their at-home sessions and monitoring.

Once the players are back in training, the governing bodies will still be working on the details of how to execute whatever end of season plan they agreed to when they reopened the training grounds. Everything from potentially sanitizing the grounds to preparing the pitches to coordinating with public transport, broadcasters and the rest will take time, time that will allow the athletes to train. Even if the games are played behind closed doors, it will not be a rapid sequence.

And all that is setting aside the fact that Premier League will not want to self-inflict a flurry of injuries over the final nine matchweeks of the season. The league will not want the optics of poor football and a surge in injuries with the world watching more closely and longingly than ever.

Football’s decision-makers should heed Kevin De Bruyne’s warning, but they should definitely should not need it when making these decisions.