Roma Review of 2016 Part 5: Strootman’s return

Darcy Norman, Roma Director of Performance: “Everyone knows Kevin is a unique case, because of what he went through. I think the stuff he has been through would have slowed down a different person. But given his mental fortitude, which you see on the pitch, that’s the same effort he put into moving things forward and now, afterwards, taking care of his body.

"He’ll tell you that having these injuries has taught him a lot about how to look after himself now. I think those injuries would have derailed a lesser person but Kevin had the mental fortitude to deal with it. All the credit goes to him.”

Alberto De Rossi, Primavera coach: “When Kevin trained with the young lads, he kept insisting my players should make themselves heard on the pitch. There was one training session where he really shouted and I don't think the lads will forget that day in a hurry. It was a great demonstration of his professionalism. It would be brilliant to have a first-team player come and train with us every now and then – not just when they're recovering from injury. It would really help our boys' development. It would also be great to have Spalletti for a training session too - that would do our players the world of good.”

Darcy Norman: “The recovery process is like the team on the pitch – you have people in different positions and they all play a part in the process. You don’t win the game without all of them. These rehabs don’t happen successfully just down to one person. It starts with the appropriate diagnosis of the injury then, if surgery is needed, you need a top surgeon to execute it well, and then after that good physios have to do all the soft-tissue work that goes un-seen. And then comes the fitness work that brings them back up to playing football. Just like football, there’s a tactical and technical element to it all. You are constantly saying, ‘Look, what can we do better to help this person?’ Of course, there is the mental element as well. Some guys, like Kevin, you have to hold back sometimes – but others you definitely need to push to do more or to motivate by setting goals and dates and recovery drives.

“It’s a process like anything else, and we have a great team behind the team that are all working well to ensure the player gets back as soon as possible. Every recovery is the same but different. Again, like football, you may have two right-backs but they are not the same player, they have the same position but they play in slightly different styles. And it is the same with injuries - they might have the same injury but the recovery process will move differently for two players depending on so many variables; from the tissue work they do to the tolerance of pain and their body type.

“If a player is historically much stronger than another guy, then he might move on a bit quicker in the process. All that has to be factored into the process, but from a procedural standpoint we always look for players to hit certain requirements before they can move on to the next part, whether that be running or changing direction. That allows us to continue to refine our systems and come up with better ways to make that process shorter.

“We go with the attitude that we want rehab to be so difficult that the game seems easy. We want them to be prepared for every circumstance. We want them to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. We have guys saying, ‘Wow, this is way harder than what the first team is doing’ and we tell them that if they can cope with this then they can cope with anything. Obviously there are certain things you cannot recreate before they return to the pitch – tackles, contact – but that’s a variable that’s always there, you can’t forget that these guys got injured despite having a healthy body in the first place.”

Jim Pallotta, Roma President: “We put in the new performance people and we kept a number of our own people that we thought were good. We made some changes in medical, but the interesting thing that happened was that in the first week, they went off-site for a few days and then had a lunch all together. Then Darcy and Eddie [Lippie] asked about their inputs on everything. I remember one of the staff members said, ‘This is the greatest day,’ and Ed might have asked, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘This is the first time that anybody ever asked us about our opinion.’

“That’s what we’re trying to strive for - if we hire these good people, we want their input. Having ‘yes men’ or people without input in their specialties is stupid. I think it’s clear how quickly we’re recovering some of these players like Rudiger, Nura, Rui and others - and at the same time they’re putting on muscle and getting in shape. A lot of European football clubs have been asking what we are doing where that’s happening, and we’re clearly willing to help other teams on that because we are dealing with humans. We’re not going to be secretive around that stuff.”

Darcy Norman: “Returning to playing in the first team was certainly a mental hurdle for Kevin – you’d have to be superhuman for it not to be. But it’s a great compliment to him that it didn’t seem that way, that he came back strong almost immediately. One thing we say in rehab is that you want to come up as close to the edge of the Grand Canyon, to get the best view possible, but you don’t want to go so far that you fall off the edge.

“There’s a book called ‘The Obstacle is the Way’ by Ryan Holiday, which basically advocates hitting all obstacles in life head-on, because you can always learn something from them. And that is definitely one of the points we stressed with Kevin. We knew it was tough, we knew it was a difficult thing to go through, but we stressed with him that he would come through it all stronger and it would give him some tools that, although maybe he did not yet know when he might need to use them, would help him down the line.”

Lorenzo Grossi, Primavera player: “I didn’t play when Strootman turned out for the Primavera against Avellino, but I was bowled over by his attitude in training. Whenever we had to tackle him, us Primavera lads took it easy because we were afraid of injuring him, but he used to look at us and say: ‘You have to tackle hard!’ He was a great pro.”

Kevin Strootman, Roma midfielder: "I'll always be grateful to the Primavera players because those lads helped me through a tough time. It was difficult for me to come back after three operations. You're missing so many things like fitness and self-belief. The Primavera players supported me. When I was training with them, nobody wanted to go in on me; they would stay two metres away. I spoke with [Alberto] De Rossi and the lads, explaining that if they don't challenge me, I'd never return.”

Darcy Norman: “When we arrived, Kevin was the first big injury we had to cope with as a group. He moved along, did well, worked hard, came back to the team, set a great example for the guys in their process. They all saw what he had to deal with, what he had to come through and the way he managed to do so. So since then others have definitely been like, ‘Okay, I’m going to do what Kev did – I’m going to knuckle down, I’m going to work hard and I’m going to come back.’

Lorenzo Grossi: “I was able to chat to Kevin the second time I was called up for a first-team match, when we beat Sassuolo 3-1 away in Serie A. It was amazing to go back to Mapei Stadium, the place where we’d won the Scudetto a few months previously. On top of that, it was a dream come true for me to be with the first team, even if I didn’t make it off the bench. It’s something I’d dreamed of ever since I was young. I was sat near to him on the plane home. He’s a fantastic person – really humble and always happy to help the young players. It was amazing to see him score in the derby to give Roma the lead.”

Kevin Strootman: “I was making so many mistakes in training that I thought maybe I'd never get back in the first team, but they were great at helping me get back to top form. They are a great group that works hard, always listening and putting the effort in. Ultimately, they were rewarded with the Scudetto and the Super Cup. I think many Primavera players will go on to make it in Serie A."

Darcy Norman: “Someone like Mario Rui – he sees Rudiger running after two months and thinks, ‘Hey, that’s me! I’m following that same path.’ Then he has a more optimistic view. And, of course, they are all competitive guys. So Florenzi wants to know how the guys were doing at different dates, because he wants to be doing better than they were doing. So that creates a familiar approach to them - they create milestones and targets and then do what they have to do to accomplish that and make that happen. As bad as suffering is, it brings people together. If you go through some suffering together then you build a sort of unspoken bond. That only strengthens the group when they come back.”

Lorenzo Grossi: “I spoke to Mario Rui before his comeback with the Primavera. We were at home against Bologna and both of us were lining up in defence. He was a very humble, laid-back guy and he enjoyed having a laugh with us in training.”

Darcy Norman: “The coaching staff have been great in that regard: They say to us, when you say he is ready to go, we’ll take him back. If we say a player is not ready, they accept that. I think that’s the benefit of having a good coach with a solid system, one where if a player goes down then another player can step in and fill that role. They might bring different individual attributes, but they both know the primary functions.

"If you don’t have a coach with a basic system, where players can be in some respects interchangeable, then you run the risk of having individual players rushed back or desperately wanted, and then the wheels can fall off. So it’s a credit to the coaching staff that when you run a good system, you train a good system, then individual injuries become less of a burden and so then that recovery process can be done without unnecessary outside pressures.”

Jim Pallotta: “Unfortunately, we’ve been unlucky with knees and ankles but one of the nice things is that we are getting guys back and ready to play much faster. Recovery time is much quicker. By the way, we are not putting people on the field that are not ready. My number one thing that I said to these guys at the beginning - and one thing that I continually say - is that I am not going to take a chance at hurting any of these players.

"There’s not a chance that we are going to have that happen. They have to be ready and you have to tell the coaches that they are not ready. So we are pushing guys on what they can physically do to get them back in shape but we are not pushing them on the field until they are 100% ready to be on that field.”