The role of Matteo Osti has come under scrutiny several times since his arrival at AC Milan under Stefano Pioli, but it has never been as intense as it is currently.
With the latest injury to Malick Thiaw, Milan have racked up 25 injuries for the season the vast majority of them are muscular (18). It is a topic that the club are analysing very seriously in this period, also because in practical terms it costs points.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below) reports, Osti is under the lens. It is unusual for an athletic trainer to generate headlines, i.e. a figure who works behind the scenes, but on social media he has been made out to be a villain by the Milan fans who consider him the main culprit for the injury crises.
Osti can oppose them with the title of best trainer of 2021-22, the year of the Scudetto win, after which he said: “I’ve been doing this job for twenty years now and it’s truly a great honour to have achieved this goal.”
Born in 1971, originally from Ostiglia in the province of Mantua, Osti oversaw the athletic preparation of Chievo in Serie A in 2010, then of Palermo. His collaboration with Stefano Pioli began at Bologna in 2011 and continued with Lazio, Inter, Fiorentina and Milan.
For the club, Osti and his staff are not the main ones responsible for the many physical stops of the Rossoneri squad: at most, they share the blame. Which in some ways is also recognised.
“We will try to understand the reason for so many injuries, the data worries me,” admits Pioli. While the prediction made before Milan-Fiorentina did not come true: “The break helped us find some solutions, I’m sure that the injury numbers will improve in the future.”
In any case, it is inevitable that the work of the athletic trainer is associated externally with the physical fitness of the team.Even within Milanello a reflection on the working methods of Osti and the staff will be made again.
He gave an interview to Milan TV two years ago outlining his duties and his methodology. Only ten days ago Osti himself had participated as a speaker at the ‘Il nuova calcio’ conference where he was speaking as an expert in ‘high-speed and intensity training in the game of football’.
On that occasion he explained: “The cornerstones of our work? Awareness and responsibility. The footballer must also be involved during athletic work, he is an active part of it.
“This is why we aim to involve those who play less as much as possible. It is not uncommon to see players at work, even an hour after the end of the session. They stay to recover, they learn to manage themselves.”
A similar situation engulfed Milan in 2017. Vincenzo Montella’s Milan, weak and tired in some outings, identified the culprit as Emanuele Marra who was in charge of the preparation. They sacked him.
