Atalanta star Gianluca Scamacca has grow to be the most recent Italy participant to endure an anterior cruciate ligament harm, struggling partly because of the scheduling of contemporary soccer.
The 25-year-old Italian ahead was carried off the pitch in Sunday night’s pre-season pleasant with Parma, having fallen awkwardly on the turf after his studs caught. Medical assessments later confirmed that he’d torn a number of ligaments in his left knee.
Scamacca will now be out of motion for Atalanta for no less than 5 to 6 months, finishing derailing his 2024-25 season. This blow comes at a very painful time for the 25-year-old, contemplating that he was simply hitting his stride in Bergamo and represented Italy at Euro 2024.
Scamacca the most recent Italy sufferer
Sadly for Scamacca and Italy, anterior cruciate ligament accidents have been a plague of the Azzurri lately, robbing the nationwide staff of up-and-coming gamers on common event.
Notably salient examples embody Federico Chiesa, who missed nearly 12 months of soccer in 2022, and Nicolo Zaniolo, who suffered back-to-back cruciate ligament tears in 2020 and 2021.
The problem is so problematic that Atalanta had been already coping with a case, having misplaced Giorgio Scalvini to the harm within the last recreation of their 2023-24 season, which compelled the gifted defender to drag out of the European Championship.
As soon as a rarity in Italian soccer, critical ligament accidents are actually proving more and more regarding for the Azzurri, with many believing that gamers like Chiesa and Zaniolo by no means managed to recapture their magic after their respective points.
One widespread thread linking all these gamers is their heavy work masses throughout a season, barely having an opportunity to relaxation amidst the league and the cup, in addition to presumably the Supercoppa and any European competitors. This doesn’t even embody worldwide degree.
Within the 2023-24 season, Scamacca noticed over 2300 minutes of motion throughout 44 matches for Atalanta, not together with friendlies or worldwide fixtures. Solely 13 days after ending the Serie A season, the striker was on the pitch for Italy’s Euro 2024 opener towards Albania.
Solely weeks after the event concluded, the 25-year-old returned to Atalanta’s pre-season coaching camp, collaborating in train work and friendlies, beginning his 2024-25 season.
The present scenario will solely proceed to exacerbate, particularly with FIFA’s revamped Membership World Cup including extra journey and video games to the schedules of top-level gamers, giving them even much less time to relaxation and get well as the trendy tempo of the sport continues to extend.
For Scamacca, he’ll be hoping to observe within the footsteps of Riccardo Calafiori somewhat than Chiesa, with the previous finishing recovering from the cruciate ligament rupture he suffered with Roma again in 2018.
For Italy, the stress is now on gamers like Mateo Retegui, Giacomo Raspadori and outdoors candidates like Andrea Pinamonti to step up and show themselves, needing to provide the nationwide staff a supply of objectives following the Atalanta striker’s harm.
