The first-classl injuries that Milan continuously suffered from September 2001 to May 2002 are far too many to number - an average of at least four/five theoretically incompliant first string players who decidedly altered the Devil’s championship as concerns performance.
The declaration the Managing Director, Adriano Galliani, made while introducing the new team must be read from this perspective: “MilanLab is a project that fascinates us more than football stickers”. An expected reference to possible champions snatched from rival teams by doling out billions. Theoretically they could work miracles but a simple muscular problem risks keeping them out for a long spell, hence marking a wrong investment. Almost 200 billion of the old Italian lira were spent on one of the most impressive campaigns in history, made unsuccesful by a series of physical problems. The Milan team has yet to digest the last season’s unlucky experience. Here then is its Management’s simple and productive trend of thought. Better invest almost 3 million euros to create a real databank of their players, increasing the possibility of preserving their psychological and physical integrity rather than enter into auctions of unknown champions, especially in terms of past pathologies, as we unfortunately learnt from the Redondo case. The experiment is really innovative for Italy, but it is certainly not amazing. The thought of creating a bionic player may seem excessive - it is certain that the high technology system will help monitor and assess an athlete, in order to increase his physical potential to the utmost and to prevent possible ailments and dysfunctions. Nothing must be neglected and left in the hands of fate during this stage of analysis! Even the most irrelevant details play an important role in this superprofessional soccer in which economic interests call the shots, often creating a set of values to the detriment of the sporty spirit. Even a pair of shoes or the type of fabric used for daily garments could influence the performance on the field! And in fact the wardrobes of the players concerned have been virtually restocked. In a nutshell, after preparing an archive of diagnostic data and having drawn conclusions from the reports of the various muscular and articular injuries, the Milanese medical staff, thanks to software and specialized equipment, is able to constantly monitor the pschological and physical conditions of every player. With a simple test that lasts eight minutes, to be performed in a bunker laboratory about 100sq.mt large in the Milanello underground, they will gain specific and exhaustive answers compared to the traditional medical check up. A sort of integration, naturally non.-invasive, which the Director Daniele Tognaccini, Milan’s athletic trainer, thus summarizes: “Practically speaking the investigative stage conducted on a player will consist in three types of tests. One will define the player’s normal conditions. And so far there is nothing exceptional. Stage two will analyse the performance in order to know when the player is at the peak of his physical conditions. This will yield a detailed answer which, thanks to the aid of artificial intelligence, will enable the Management to know the physical conditions of those who, during the purchase stage and the moment of entering the field, hold the fate of the establishment they play for in their hands, leaving the sphere of non traceable hypotheses behind.” Concerning this matter, Galliani was quite explicit: “Today the purchase or sale of a player, in terms of budget, can mean life or death for the establishment’s accounts. MilanLab will help us in this, showing us a more or less risky situation which could not be assessed before”. It could be the obvious solution - the revolutionary factor saves the ‘legs’ and thus the assets of football establishments. Is everything under control? We are not too sure about that and here the Italian saying seems to fit like a glove - ‘The Devil seems to have made the pans but not the lids’. If in fact the mistake in the Redondo matter (the Argentinian champion purchased by Milan two years ago and never used, not even for a minute, due to a series of injuries) could be traced back to a risky psychological and physical condition which could not be assessed with the investigative methods then at hand, there is no certainty that from now on life will be a bed of roses. Quite the contrary! In my opinion, the risk of entering a hornet’s nest of hypotheses remains and its very thought is scary! It could give new energy to the followers of the sect of “Biscardi”, noisy members of spoken soccer supported by a thousand ifs and buts. Can you imagine the following medical dispatch on the eve of a breathtaking derby championship: “A.C. Milan informs that the analyses of the personal data of Andry Shevchenko supplied by our laboratory strongly advices to avoid using him during the next match - high risk of injury”. And if till that moment Sheva had scored constantly and was the man his companions were psychologically counting on to disrupt rival defense? And who will explain it to the fans that their man and hope, the one who could win the title or get close to it, will be kept back because he is a risky asset for the establishment? And must a trainer, whose credibility and even a year’s work is at stake in that match, conform with the establishment’s regulations or will he be able to rebel, supported by an “upheaval” of the populace? Then let us expect, at least from this angle, an incredibly interesting season filled with food for talk. If in fact MilanLab seems able to overcome its physical problems by producing endless data, we have still to see who will be given the task of practically applying troublesome diagnoses. And they, these champions who are monitored every second as if they were dispossessed of their very bodies and had completely delegated their health, fate, potentials and limits - how will they react on the field to this determinism which, moved by precaution, will not take chances? Some will swear that despite the test they are able to shoot a ball into the goal and others, demotivated, will give up, discouraged by tests that will make them loosers right from the start! The Devil has made the pan - he must probably hurry and ask artificial intelligence to create the lids!

Translated by Interpres sas