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AC Milan Medical Director sees "no reason" why Beckham will not carry on to World Cup 2014
Issued: November 22, 2009
AC Milan Medical Director sees "no reason" why Beckham will not carry on to World Cup 2014
22 November 2009
EXCLUSIVE
STRICTLY EMBARGOED UNTIL 0001 HOURS MONDAY 23 NOVEMBER 2009
- FULL TRANSCRIPT FAR BELOW. Any quotes used must credit Sky News -
Sky News Sports Correspondent Ian Dovaston has spoken exclusively to the AC Milan Medical Director, Jean Pierre Meersseman.
During the interview, which took place at AC Milan's training ground Milanello, Meersseman said that David Beckham can collect over 150 England caps and even play in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
This is the view of the medical mastermind who led the way in extending the careers of Italian legends Paolo Maldini and Alessandro Costacurta.
Jean Pierre Meersseman's mysterious techniques at the Milan lab, which involves predicting injuries, allowed Maldini and Costacurta to play on to the age of 41.
And he believes 34-year-old Beckham - who will link up with AC Milan and Meersseman late next month - can follow suit if he avoids serious injury.
Meersseman, who set up the cutting edge lab now being copied by Chelsea in the Premiership, joked that Beckham could play for England at South Africa 2010 “on one leg”.
Asked if Beckham could play on at international level until 2014 he said: “If he doesn't have severe injuries…nothing very traumatic, there is absolutely no reason why he couldn't.”
He later added: “I really believe so. The way he is not a very big muscle mass, rather tiny, it's all to his advantage in prolonging that kind of career.”
Meerssemann collates millions of statistics on players like many top clubs the world over, but it's how he uses the information that makes him and Daniele Tognaccini, Milan chief athletics officer, different.
The techniques are highly marketable in the world of football, where keeping top players going into their early forties could save clubs millions of pounds.
Fixing a hole in Beckham's teeth last year helped the former England captain with back problems, his running and balance:
“We pay a lot of attention to the teeth and how teeth come together,” said Meerssemann. “All information comes from your brain all the way down. And it passes through a big hole (at the base of the skull) which sometimes gets a little distorted.”
After his arrival at Milan last season, Beckham's upper legs were considered to be under-strength. His fitness levels were improved by ten days of continuously running in sand.
The Milan chief athletics officer Tognaccini said: “When David arrived in Milanello, he worked a lot in the sand. Ten days continuously, running at maximum level. The sand is a good thing for improving the strength of the (upper) leg.”
Beckham is now contracted to AC Milan until the end of the season, and will first be available to them for their game against Genoa on January 6.
He will hope for a call-up to his fourth world cup from England head coach Fabio Capello in May.
SKY NEWS – INTERVIEW JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN – FULL TRANSCRIPT
IAN DOVASTON:
Jean-Pierre, thank you very much for talking to us. We keep hearing in England about these extraordinary things you are able to do with players and extend their careers towards 40 and even over 40 if you think of Costacurta and Maldini, how are earth are you doing that?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
Well essentially, we started actually about eight years ago because we had some problems with injuries and from a purely medical point of view there was no reason to have these injuries but they still had them. So we decided to try and figure a system where we could see if it was somehow possible to predict injury so really the system of prevention, because everybody talks about prevention and in reality they don’t know how to go about those things. So knowing what to do, knowing actually the difference that makes the difference, we started to measure everything which was measurable so we started to measure from a physical point of view how the spine functions, how the gait mechanism functions, how a number of physical functions work, also from a chemical point of view, a metabolic point of view, what they eat, what they don’t eat, what they should eat, supplements, vitamins, minerals, etc, etc, intoxication’s and also from a mental point of view so we really worked together with three basic factors – the structure aspect, the chemical aspect and the mental aspect – and tried to figure out through a system of artificial intelligence what is actually the leading … what actually comes together to a leading cause of potential injury.
IAN DOVASTON:
Yes, so what you say is that you can actually predict injuries in a player?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
Yes, now we can.
IAN DOVASTON:
So when a player comes to this club you have a look at him before, because I think yours is the last signature on the transfer document, you have a look at them and you can predict, what, what injuries they will get?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
Not necessarily what injuries they get but something is going to break down in the whole system, you see. It is an approach, it is not a mechanical linear approach, it is actually non linear chaotic approach, so we use another type of philosophy to what has usually been used and we stand a good chance to know if a person is going to perform and if he has a chance to start to break down or something is going to happen that shouldn’t be happening so the system now is pretty accurate because we have collected data on a consistent basis for over eight years now, this is the ninth year so eight or nine years we are doing that and so we have literally millions of bits of data and it all is being logged together through this system of artificial intelligence and it is a very high accuracy rate of predicting.
IAN DOVASTON:
Is anybody else anywhere in the world, I’m thinking for instance back in the premier league in England, is anybody using your methods?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
I think Chelsea is starting, we have Carletto Ancelotti and Bruno Demichelis of course, very good friends of ours, and they are starting to implement something similar. Now don’t get me wrong, I think they do more in the premier league than they do over here as far as collecting data is concerned and studying, we just use another system of evaluating this data. It is not really that far behind, I think we are ahead as far as the elaboration of the data is concerned.
IAN DOVASTON:
One of the reasons of course that we come here is because David Beckham is coming back here and of course we have got a World Cup next year and England has high hopes and David Beckham is one of the players that high hopes are built around. He is 34 and I understand that when he came here last year, his body mass index dropped from something like 13% down to something like 7%. Is that true first of all? What did you do?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
I know it dropped dramatically within a very short period of time so he really came back into shape and had a very good season with us and we are very happy he is coming back here.
IAN DOVASTON:
Yes. How did you do that? What did you do?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
Well it is again, one thing is to measure things, the other thing then is work practically on this particular client, patient or player, whatever. So we balanced for instance work on the equilibrium. Now equilibrium is a big word and it is many sub-systems, okay, that work together like communicating bases, I can’t explain it better than that. So if one system goes wrong, the other systems will somehow adapt and are actually in a chaotic state and then gradually they will assess themselves to a lower level of organisation, that’s clear, okay. So what we try to do is to come in in one of these sub-systems or several of them in time and bring them up to a higher level of organisation to where they were before rather than letting it all go down.
IAN DOVASTON:
So practically, what did you do for David Beckham that brought his body mass index down quite so dramatically?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
A matter of the way he was eating we changed, that was one thing. The way of practising because it doesn’t mean because you are running all the time that you are [inaudible] it is also how you do that, okay. Then optimising his nervous system, the control systems of his body and I am a chiropractor and we use chiropractic methods, that is one of the things that it is very, very important to have optimisation of the nervous system and I would say psychologically he didn’t need any help there, he is okay from that point of view but all these things come together so there is not a specific trick to it, it’s the complex approach that makes the difference.
IAN DOVASTON:
If I can break down that complex then, eating – what was he eating differently here that he wouldn’t have done before?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
You know, I don’t remember. I think we started not with what he was eating but the way he was eating. For instance he would eat a lot of carbohydrates and proteins immediately after practice, okay, rather than two hours before – things like that. It was just changes in the approach, mixing things in a different way. It wasn’t all that different to what he was used to, I know what he was eating in the States and I suppose I prefer Italian food really. Also shifting over to, we are very careful here about, how they say, the organoleptic qualities of the food, biologically grown food, we are very careful that there are no pesticides, insecticides and stuff like that so all this makes a difference really.
IAN DOVASTON:
The next category you said was practising, the way he practices, how did that change?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
Well sometimes you can burn more calories sprinting 100 metres than running a marathon, it all depends how you do it, at what time you do it and it is a number of things put together again, it is not something specific because what may be true for David Beckham may be completely different for Paulo Maldini for instance.
IAN DOVASTON:
And nervous system you said, what do you mean by that in terms of David Beckham?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
The whole body is controlled by the nervous system and the spinal cord, the nerves are derived from the spinal cord so if something goes wrong there and there is an interference in the expression between the brain and the organs or whatever, it doesn’t function at its optimum level so actually we try to have the two parts communicate between themselves, you see.
IAN DOVASTON:
And you can work on that?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
Of course.
IAN DOVASTON:
How do you work on that?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
That is basically chiropractic, that is what we use as the basic approach here.
IAN DOVASTON:
So what things would you do to David Beckham to help him with that?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
One thing, for instance he had back problems, I don’t say anything out of the book for that, that is rather well known and from the lower back there are nerves which control your legs, you see, so if you control the back the legs are very much better and if the legs are not better it can affect the equilibrium, etc, etc so it is all a snowballing effect really.
IAN DOVASTON:
I read, Jean-Pierre, very interestingly – I hope it’s right – that there was a small hole in his tooth or his teeth?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
Yes, for instance we pay a lot of attention to the [inaudible] system which means the teeth and how teeth come together because this has a definite influence again on the upper cervical dynamics, dealing with the spine and the nervous system, because our information comes from the brain all the way down and passes through here and it sometimes can get a little distorted or some other subtlety.
IAN DOVASTON:
So that helped him with his back problem and also with his running and his balance?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
IAN DOVASTON:
It’s extraordinary. He’s 34 now, he is heading towards a caps record in terms of England which is 125, if he gets beyond that it’s a caps record. Clearly he wants to go the World Cup, is he ready from what you saw last year and what you know of the player, which is fairly intimate?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
David in my opinion can play just like Maldini because he got to forty and decided he wants to stop and as a matter of fact Paulo could have played this year probably even better than last year because last year he played better than the year before, because if you keep the physique up to par, there is absolutely no reason, I think Paulo could have played another two or three years if he had wanted to. I really believe that David is going to go over 40 if he wants to do that. If he wants to do it, he is going to do it.
IAN DOVASTON:
And at what level? Surely you would descend down the levels of football?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
When they start to drop in force it is usually because there is something wrong, it is all a matter of finding out what’s wrong and why. Some people start to go downhill, there is something wrong, a lack of whatever, vitamin C for instance or something that is bothering them mentally or bothering them structurally. If you can eliminate all these factors there is absolutely no reason. I see a career in football like a [inaudible] which goes down and all of a sudden he decides to stop, but there is absolutely no reason that they have to stop somewhere in between.
IAN DOVASTON:
From what you know of the player, and you know him fairly intimately, medically as it were, could David Beckham for instance still be playing for England at the age of 40?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
You know, one of the things I don’t do is astrology but …
IAN DOVASTON:
Yes, yes.
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
Looking at his physique and the way we have corrected and elaborated on him and compared to all the data we have on a lot of players, I see no reason why he couldn’t play till 40 at optimum level, absolutely.
IAN DOVASTON:
So for England or for A.C. Milan perhaps even? At that level?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
I’m sure he could if he wanted to.
IAN DOVASTON:
That’s an extraordinary thing isn’t it, that we are now looking at footballers like Maldini and Costacurta who can play into their early forties at such a high level.
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
Yes, it is extraordinary.
IAN DOVASTON:
And it is as a result of the kind of things that you are doing here that nobody else knows about.
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
Well of course I would like to say maybe they are just lucky but it probably has something to do with it, I would say yes, I would say yes but of course we could have just been lucky, I don't know.
IAN DOVASTON:
You know that obviously back home most England fans, supporters, would like to see David Beckham go to this World Cup, his fourth World Cup, and they feel very good that he is in your hands because you can make … he is coming out of American football which most people think is sort of second level but here he can be transformed, as it were, back into a World Cup player.
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
Oh sure, the next World Cup is close, think about the next one, the one after that. The one now, next year, he can play that on one leg. I’m sure, he is in excellent shape, excellent shape.
IAN DOVASTON:
Is it possible that David Beckham could actually, with the kind of medical back up that he has here, it is possible for instance that he could play in 2014 in Brazil, at that World Cup, is it possible from your point of view?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
Of course, if he doesn’t have severe injuries. Of course if someone jumps into his legs and he breaks both legs it would be kind of hard to recuperate and things like that but if there is nothing, as I say, nothing very traumatic, there is absolutely no reason why he couldn’t with his type of physique. With other players it is maybe a little bit different, their career may be, where they used to stop at say 30, 31, now I think they will stop at 34, 35, still a little bit later than they used to but the physique of David, I see him much more like a Costacurta and a Maldini, so he can go on.
IAN DOVASTON:
What is it about his physique that makes you confident in that prediction? Is he special in some way physiologically?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
He is special first of all because he loves to play, that’s one thing, he doesn’t consider it work as a matter of fact, I have never heard of one player who stops one season and the immediately starts another season, he loves to play, he loves the game and that’s very important. So if you don’t consider whatever you are doing is work, it’s just play, that is a really big advantage. Also the way he does not have a very big muscle mass, rather tiny, it is all to his advantage in prolonging that type of career.
IAN DOVASTON:
We are all talking back home about whether he can get to the 2010 World Cup and what you’re saying is that actually he could even get to the 2014 World Cup.
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
I believe so. Again it would be ridiculous to make a prediction like that because there are so many factors involved but if I had to decide right now if it was possible, I would say yes. Not based on my opinion, because we all really [like] David exceptionally here and he is very, very well loved, David, but that’s not the point. Based on real data, hard facts, I would say yes, but there are so many factors and football is not something you can …
IAN DOVASTON:
But as it stands at the moment, if there is no great trauma between now and 2014, he is a player who could play at that World Cup in Brazil?
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
I really believe so, yes, yes, absolutely.
IAN DOVASTON:
Extraordinary, extraordinary, and wonderful to talk to you, thank you very much.
JEAN-PIERRE MEERSSEMAN:
Thank you very much, good to talk to you.
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Francoise Frost
Sky News Assistant Publicist
T. 07824 834825
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