Why Arsenal's World Cup Winning Physio is An Interesting Addition to the Staff

OK, so the physiotherapists at your team are not something you might think about very much (unless you have a thing for Chelsea's Eva Carneiro), but as far as some, admittedly fairly nerdy people, were concerned, Wenger's best signing of the summer was a physiotherapist who was on the staff for Germany's World Cup winning side. While you may or may not be familiar with any of the guys who work on the injuries and rehab for our players (though you should check out Terry Sminter if you are not – he is hilarious), the bringing on board of Shad Forsythe, a highly experienced American specialist who was one of Joachim Loew's four key health professionals working with the Germany squad throughout their successful 2014 World Cup campaign, was a good signing.

How Much of a Difference Does a World Class Physio Make?

While it can often look like the main work of a physio on match day is to come along and briskly rub the thighs of a player for some reason, these guys can be highly important to the strategy of a club when it comes to returning players from injury effectively. It has been said of many players, that a badly handled rehabilitation from things like sprains can actually impact the rest of their careers. As an example, this has been hypothesized as a reason for Fernando Torres being less than stellar since leaving Liverpool – prior to his exit from the club Benitez, who was still manager of Liverpool at the time, possibly handled his return from a hamstring injury badly and made him play before he was ready, which some people think is what caused the drop in performance he has never been able to recover from since.

If you have an injury prone player (and we could argue that we have a few of those right now at Arsenal!), then a very skilled physio with a big focus on performance recovery as well as simply 'fixing the injury', such as Forsythe is reported to be, could hugely impact how well a player can regain their form, and prevent bad decisions about how to reintroduce rehabilitated players into the starting team. Early signs suggest he is working out with Giroud and Debuchy both nearing fitness a lot sooner than expected.

But He Isn't Magic...

Obviously, taking all of this into account, having Shad Forsythe on the staff is a good thing, however we all know he didn't come to us from Hogwarts and can't wave a wand that'll repair, say, half of Theo Walcott's leg in a flash. In fact, we may even see longer recovery times from certain types of injuries, as Forsythe seems like he aims more for the best performance on the comeback than for patching them up and sending them out. While everything he can do will seem magic compared to most of our own experience of sports therapy (usually someone from the gym who has been to therapyworlddirect.com for a massage table and can probably slightly alleviate that pain in your glute by hitting it for 20 minutes), he alone can't win us the league. He can help, though...

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