http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18887653# Interesting article on how Man City led the league last season in keeping their players injury free. Sports Science clearly plays a big role these days and with Nigel's background and the intensive pre-season schedule we put our players through we could have a vital fitness edge when it all kicks off in August. What do we all think?
I believe we all know how Saints monitor the situation, from the tiny details to the whole. Nigel is always joking on about giving the players their MOTs, and it's a light hearted reference to the method of assessing their fitness and health, and making sure they pass their test goals. I would expect the trend towards even finer detail to continue. I know I could look this up, but I'll ask it here anyway... With the Olympics just days away as a reminder, what is the situation with professional footballers in their everyday training..? Are they subject to the same strict limitations, regarding the list of banned substances..?
Going back a few years I used to write to the saints managers when they were appointed, just to welcome them to the club and let them understand the fans' (i.e. my) expectations. Most of them would write back too! One of the ones I wrote to was Alan Ball. I remember suggesting to him the importance of proper fitness. I'd come from an athletics background where specific fitness was already at the scientific level and I could see that the sort of stuff football teams were doing at the time didn't really add up to much. Rugby had just started taking it seriously so i thought he'd be extremely interested especially as he was pretty fit himself when he played. Anyway, I said that the first team to go properly full-time (e.g. like American football, where they do physical training, drills, mental stuff, watch videos of the opposition etc etc) could probably win the league even if the players weren't necessarily the best. I never got a reply. How times have changed. I believe there is still more they could do but you take last year's Championship team and put them up against any Saints team of the past and I'm convinced they'd win easily just because of their fitness levels.
There's something very interesting which has come up across the pond in the MLS. They working with Adidas to create the world's first "smart soccer" league. The technology is being debuted at the MLS All-Star game against Chelsea, before being rolled out across the league. Basically, the players have monitors fitted inside vests that sit between the shoulder blades for comfort. It basically monitors EVERYTHING about the player, relays it back to a secure server, and allows the teams coaches to view the data (real-time I must add) on something such as an iPad app. This app can turn all this data into sensible information to allow the managers to make decisions on the player during a game, like if someone is slacking off or they need to slack off or they need to be subbed. It's also used in training to track a player's progress. It basicaly works in the same way as the sports bras we use at the moment, and it sounds like the sort of thing that would interest Adkins, being a Sports Scientist. I think it's called the Adidas miCoach or something if you want to have a looksee. I don't know how many other teams use the monitors that Adkins uses, but I imagine not every team does, so we immediately have an advantage over them.
Just to answer my own question - banned substances in professional football are as outlawed and as punishable as they are in other sports. However, the punishments in pro-football for taking banned substances tend to be rather lightweight compared to sports such as athletics, where careers are essentially halted for a few years.
