Cristiano Ronaldo gets off the plane as the team of Portugal arrive to ViraCopos international airport at Campinas, Brazil on Wednesday. (EPA)
World player of the year Cristiano Ronaldo and his Portugal teammates were greeted by around 300 supporters as they arrived at their base camp in Campinas on Wednesday.
Coach Paulo Bento had good news for those waiting patiently in the baking heat of Sao Paulo state’s third biggest city as he confirmed that all his players were fit and ready for action.
Ronaldo was troubled by an inflamed tendon in his left knee in the final third of the season and was advised by Real Madrid doctors that he should rest as much as possible between then and the end of the campaign or risk missing the World Cup.
The 29-year-old Real Madrid striker, who is his country’s record goal scorer, sat-out matches against Real Sociedad, Almería and Celta Vigo in La Liga as well as missing the Spanish Cup final against Barcelona.
He managed to play in the Champions League final but club coach Carlo Ancelotti admitted he did so while being less than 100 per cent and he missed Portugal’s friendly with Greece at the weekend.
But Ronaldo returned to play some part in Portugal’s final World Cup warm-up game against Ireland, and was involved in two of the goals in a 5-1 win. Bento is now confident about him starting against Germany in Bahia on June 16.
“We have come through a difficult period with lots of injury setbacks but everyone is fit and available for the first game,” said the Portugal coach who was buoyed by the reaction to Portugal’s arrival to Campinas.
“It was a long and exhausting trip but we knew it would be that way. Now we just need to rest and prepare in the best way possible to face Germany. We hope and believe we can win the support of the Brazilian people.”
A mix of local supporters and Portugal fans greeted the team’s arrival in the midday heat at the Royal Palm Plaza Resort. Many wore Real Madrid shirts but there were also Flamengo, Brazil and Portugal shirts lining the slip road to the luxury hideaway.
One over-excited fan carrying a bicycle and draped in a Portugal flag even stepped out in front of the coach as it made its way up towards the hotel and had to be dragged back out of its path by police and soldiers.
Real Madrid defender Pepe waved enthusiastically from the window as Ronaldo looked on, slightly overshadowed by the presence of ‘Ronaldo the Duck’ among the supporters - a Portugal fan sweating in a Donald Duck costume and wearing a well-stretched Portugal shirt over his disguise.
Fans hoping for autographs - including one clutching a Panini sticker album open on the Portugal page - were left disappointed as the coach whisked players straight into the confines of the hotel.
There was then a brief glimpse of the players again as they made their way to their rooms and waved from the closed windows of the hotel to the delight of supporters surrounding the complex.
Injury list dispiriting and predictable
Barely a day has gone by in the run-up to the World Cup without a player seeing his dreams wrecked by injury, and the lengthening casualty list is as predictable as it is dispiriting. A host of players, including Colombia striker Radamel Falcao, German midfielder Marco Reus and French winger Franck Ribery will miss out on Brazil, while others such as Uruguay striker Luis Suarez and Chile midfielder Arturo Vidal are facing a race to be fit.
Past experience suggests that those top players who are still standing when the competition gets under way could struggle to produce their best form after an exhausting domestic season.
“It’s not surprising that many top footballers are either injured or unfit for the upcoming World Cup,” Vincent Gouttebarge, chief medical officer for the World Players’ Union FIFPro, told Reuters.
“The top footballers have been exposed during the whole season to a high workload due to training and competition, while recovery periods are scarce during a football season.”
Back in 2002, research led by former Sweden national team doctor Jan Ekstrand found a direct relationship between the number of matches played in the run-up to the World Cup and the players’ performances and injuries.
Ekstrand said that UEFA and FIFA had taken notice. “Both FIFA and UEFA are very concerned about the health of the players and listening more and more to medical opinions,” he told Reuters. “But there are so many factors involved in making a match schedule and the medical factors is only one of those.”
Gouttebarge added that the physical demands on players during the games themselves were growing. “The intensity has changed, the number of sprints of 10 or 20 metres in order to press, or to defend,” he said. Over the last 10 years, players had also been doing more strength-building exercises, as Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo showed when he ripped off his shirt and exposed his rippling muscles after scoring in the Champions League final.
“Before, players just did running but now the gym is part of the training and if it is not well adapted, with time to recover, it can induce injuries.”
FIFA has a four-yearly calendar to stipulate when international matches and competitions are played, however this is designed more to avoid club-versus-country clashes and places no limit on the amount of club football that should be played. “There is no escaping the fact that better harmony between domestic, continental and international match calendars in order to limit the workload on players is an urgent priority,” said Gouttebarge.
FIFPro said the issue could no longer be ignored and demanded that the players have a greater say in the running of the game. “The ever-increasing demands being placed on the players is a critical debate,” said FIFPro spokesman Andrew Orsatti. “It is a question of football’s fractured governance structure which allows such rights abuses to occur on a revolving basis. “That the players are abused is a fact. It stems from not being central to football’s decision-making structure. There is an administrative imbalance which overlooks the players and promotes a culture where there are insufficient checks and balances. “Football in its current scandalous form is unsustainable.”