Some interesting background has emerged regarding Rafael Leao and the eve of the win over Torino on Saturday.
La Gazzetta dello Sport report that Leao’s international break will be spent doing treatment, gentle exercises, meticulously measured workloads and medical checks to monitor the health of his adductor muscle. In other words, not what he hoped for.
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It’s not so much the disappointment of not being in training camp with all his Portugal team-mates, but rather the understandable anxiety generated by the uncertainty about the condition of a troublesome muscle.
It’s unfortunately a classic case of pubalgia: it comes, you treat it, it improves, it goes away, but it’s just around the corner and sometimes it reappears just when it seems over.
Allegri’s doubts
Massimiliano Allegri himself, in a press conference in mid-February, explained how the Portuguese was doing better. Then, things began to decline again, and Rafa was left with only one option: try to live with the problem.
Except that living with it is complex. It’s difficult in training, when you have to push a little to see how his legs respond. Naturally, it’s even more difficult in matches, when you need to push yourself to the max.
For him, this is a particularly difficult situation: Rafa’s best weapon is his sprinting and running forward, and having to manage his runs limits him. It’s like going onto the pitch with the constant thought of potentially running into even worse problems. With the World Cup coming up, it’s not ideal.
Leao has been in a sort of ‘blender’ in recent weeks, with so many thoughts racing between criticism, difficulties when he takes the field, cryptic messages on social media, and the wait to see when the treatment will take effect.
Speaking of the field, his absence against Torino, which was confirmed after the final training session, was particularly notable. It was an absence that inevitably set the clock back, erasing the (theoretical) progress of recent weeks.
The failure to call him up came after a pre-match discussion with Allegri, in which the coach had asked him to help the team more, receiving a response that – more or less – was along the lines of: “I can’t do it.” At that point, Max decided not to call up Leao, who was ‘taken aback’ by the situation.
Looking at it from the outside, Rafa’s apprehension and reflections are legitimate, as is the coach’s decision. That doesn’t mean Allegri has lost patience, far from it: Leao was and remains absolutely central to Max’s plans, but the coach wants him back in good health for the final sprint.
It starts in Naples, in the Stadio Maradona where Rafa has put on a show. Right now, Nkunku is understandably favoured to play alongside Pulisic, but if Rafa’s recovery were to improve over the next ten days, there would be no doubt about Allegri’s choices.
We always play better without Leao. Please sell him.
“The failure to call him up came after a pre-match discussion with Allegri, in which the coach had asked him to help the team more, receiving a response that – more or less – was along the lines of: “I can’t do it.” At that point, Max decided not to call up Leao, who was ‘taken aback’ by the situation.”
Well, TBH, if he can’t help the team, he shouldn’t be on the pitch. Simple as that.