Ricardo Pereira is back and eager to make his mark but Leicester must be patient

The thing about best laid plans is that fate can intervene and they can quickly go awry.

That has certainly proved the case (again) for Leicester City, Brendan Rodgers and luckless full-back Ricardo Pereira.

At the tail end of last term, a campaign that had been interrupted so regularly by injuries including the untimely loss of key defender Wesley Fofana in the final warm-up game of the summer, Rodgers had spoken about how he was looking forward to the first full pre-season in years. After successive campaigns complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, this was a chance to have all his players rested and fully fit, and draw up his master plan for the new campaign — a strategy that had Pereira at its core.

Advertisement

Rodgers believes Pereira, when fit and firing, is one of the best right-backs in the Premier League. He is a player who has all the required defensive qualities, but also the attacking armoury to ease his side’s deficiencies on the right flank.

Pereira was going to be an inverted full-back, a player who would step forward into midfield when Leicester were in possession rather than merely seeking to overlap on the outside. He would underlap and play on the inside.

“We had a really good pre-season developing that aspect of our game,” Rodgers said. “It’s one of the areas of the modern game — to exploit those half-spaces and having players who can play inside, and Ricardo was brilliant at that. That gave us the overload inside and, not only that, he can make passes from in there. Not everyone can do it. It’s a particular player that can give you that, but certainly that was something that we were looking at in pre-season.”

And then fate stepped in.

Pereira ruptured his Achilles tendon in a friendly against Sevilla. Three days later he underwent surgery and was ruled out for six months. For the second year in succession, Leicester had lost a key player to a serious injury on the eve of the new season.

As disappointing as it was for Rodgers, it was devastating for Pereira who had only just started to show his true form again after rupturing his ACL against Aston Villa in March 2020, an injury that had kept him sidelined for 10 months through the COVID-19 lockdown. There was a hamstring injury to boot — muscular problems are common when a player returns from a long absence.

He has missed 68 games for Leicester in nearly three years.

With modern sports science, such serious injuries are not the career-enders they once were. But, psychologically, some players never recover from such setbacks. Pereira, thankfully, seems to be made of stern stuff.

Advertisement

In a recent interview with the BBC, he talked about how he had a different perspective as he contemplated a second lengthy stint in recovery. He accepted it, rather than feeling sorry for himself, and remained positive. He broke down the process of rehabilitation into a succession of tasks. His language centred on “winning” his battle against the injury.

“Okay, it’s bad but it could be worse,” he said. “(Sergio) Aguero has stopped playing and (Christian) Eriksen almost died on the field. So stay positive. I am proud of myself for keeping my good spirits.”

Rodgers says that attitude not only helped Ricardo’s recovery, but that of his team-mate James Justin who, coincidentally, also suffered an Achilles rupture after returning from an ACL at similar times to Ricardo.

He has also taken on the role of translator for new arrival Tete, the first Brazilian to play for Leicester. Even when he hasn’t been able to play, he has still been contributing to everyday life at the club.

“Because of the previous injuries he’s had, on this one he looked a lot happier — if you can say that,” Rodgers says. “Having had the trauma before and the upset, his mindset was right from the very start really positive, and he’s worked himself back to a really good level.

“He’s also been brilliant for JJ (Justin). He sees himself as an experienced player and we hope, fingers crossed, that he can stay available now because he’s clearly one of the best full-backs in the Premier League once he’s fit and up to speed.”

That process may take time.

Injuries to others, including Justin, have meant Pereira has been thrust straight back into a relegation scrap, wrecking any plans Rodgers had to ease him back gently. Victor Kristiansen’s ankle problem has seen the Portuguese start the last two games, and he completed 90 minutes at Southampton even if, according to Luke Anthony, clinical director and physiotherapist at GoPerform, recovering from an Achilles injury is far from straightforward. It may be that Pereira may not be back to his old self this season. Needs must at present, though patience is still required.

Advertisement

“There is no guarantee that you just come back and you are fine,” says Anthony. “In the players I have worked with, most will have a slight deficit in that calf. But they will be able to accommodate it because of the high level of training they have done. It may not be a performance deficit, just a residual deficit in flexibility or strength.

“There is a risk of re-injury, but generally it is in that first nine-to-12-month period. Once you get through that then, generally, you are OK. But if it is going to re-rupture it generally happens from about three to nine months.

“You can have a player back playing games at six to seven months, but it takes 12 months plus to get to where they were previously. They will often come back and look good initially on adrenalin, but then the grind starts and they will have a dip.”

It has been another long road back for Pereira.

The surgery is not straightforward. He will have had the fibres of his Achilles stitched together with a surgical suture and, unlike after his ACL, he would have had to wait several weeks post-surgery before beginning the rehabilitation to avoid any risk of damage to the repair or infection in the wound. He will have restricted to life in a protective boot at first. Medical staff would have attempted to quell his natural instincts to start work immediately on a comeback.

“The surgery would have been done as soon as possible, but then it needs to heal and the last thing the surgeons would want is the player trying to do too much, too soon,” says Anthony.

“Then the physios will work on the ankle with some massage and muscle stimulation, but (the patient) won’t do any loading in those first few weeks. Gradually the shackles come off and they are allowed more time out of the boot, more movement. That process takes six to 12 weeks, depending on the injury.

Advertisement

“Then it is progressing how much loading they can put in. You can’t be super-aggressive with it so it is fairly boring with an Achilles for the first couple of months. With a ruptured ACL you can start to get it moving after day two or three, but with an Achilles you have to let it nit together and mend.”

Leicester’s state-of-the-art training facility will have helped the rehabilitation process. Usually, an anti-gravity treadmill is used, but in Seagrave’s hydrotherapy centre they have a treadmill pool where rehabilitating players can run on a tilting board in a shallow pool and the resistance is set and controlled by air jets.

Thereafter it would have been a process of building up more varied movement. The Achilles is heavily involved in the dynamics of football movements — pushing off to sprint, jump, land, twist and turn — and, gradually, Pereira will have worked through these phases before re-joining his teammates in full training.

“With Achilles tendons, the recovery time varies,” adds Anthony. “(Chelsea’s) Callum Hudson-Odoi was four to five months, but, with Ruben Loftus-Cheek, it was over a year. Six to seven months is fairly typical.

“He has to recondition the whole body to play football and the demands placed on it. Specifically for a tendon, it is the ballistic, plyometric movements like jumping, landing, pushing off, accelerating, decelerating. Those movements put the most stress on the tendon.

“It is six or seven hours a day for six or seven days a week of rehabilitation. Tough, gruelling work.”

Pereira has shown he has the mental strength to come back from a serious injury again. His spirit is willing. He has put in the long hours to get back to first-team action.

He deserves better luck this time.

(Top photo: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k2ttaW1ja3xzfJFsZmlrX2Z9cL7InJirnJ9ivaa%2BxKKpmmWcmraksdKtnKtlkZi1qrjLnqpo