AC Milan have been hit by waves of injuries in recent weeks which is complicating Stefano Pioli’s plans ahead of a crucial stretched of games.
Pietro Mazzara writes in his column for MilanNews that Mike Maignan, Davide Calabria, Alessandro Florenzi, Simon Kjaer, Theo Hernandez, Alexis Saelemaekers, Junior Messias and Divock Origi have all come down with issues in addition to the already long-term absentee Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
All these players have been victims of muscle problems, some more serious than other, but the piece explains that the winter World Cup has a big part to play.
Due to the pause from November until the new year, teams are being forced to play a lot of games in a short space of time and they in essence do not train. They accumulate a lot of kilometres run and therefore muscle stress, they have a day with lighter work and then they are already in an intense final training session due to playing in midweek.
Until November 13, when everything will stop for a month and a half, it will become apparent the players who have been rested perhaps as a precaution in order not to run the risk of a more serious injury that would make them miss the tournament.
Another result from the condensed schedule is that if a player is out for two or three weeks, they miss five or six games and this leads the coach to have to make others work overtime.
