The winner of England vs France may well be decided by who wins the battle between Kyle Walker and Kylian Mbappe.
A lot of talk before the quarter final has been surrounding the clash of the Manchester City right back and France’s superstar.
Mbappe has arguably been the standout star of the World Cup so far, leading the way with five goals.
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How will Walker stop Mbappe?
With the Paris Saint-Germain man opting to pull out to the left wing, Walker will be tasked with trying to stop him.
And with Mbappe in this kind of form, that’s easier said than done.
Walker was actually in a race to be fit for the World Cup after undergoing groin surgery at the start of October. His recovery has been nothing short of remarkable.
But how did he do it? And how will he maintain his fitness as he prepares for Mbappe?
Well, according to a report from the i, it’s down to high-tech goggles, compression boots and a massage gun.
The high-tech Goggles – which look like big foam sunglasses – monitor heart rate and ‘gently massage the face to reduce stress and anxiety, relieve headaches, facial tension and eye strain and can improve the quality of sleep.’
The ‘RecoveryAir JetBoots’ are huge boots that use ‘pneumatic compression to massage the legs, increasing blood flow to damaged muscle tissues and aid lymphatic drainage to reduce tension and swelling.’
Meanwhile, the ‘Theragun’ massages the muscle to aid recovery.
“He’s very gifted genetically and his speed is one of his biggest assets,” Manchester City’s head of physiotherapy, James Baldwin, said.
“To be able to maintain his speed and still be one of the fastest European players at 32 is phenomenal. He’s an extremely experienced and switched-on person who knows his own body. He’s done phenomenally well in rehab leading up to the World Cup in the surgery and everything else.
“He knows what his body needs. His body requires deep tissue treatments and therapists will use the Theragun as part of this. He’s also one of the players we sent out with the Smart Goggles – he likes to relax and finds it helps him with his sleep.
“For the World Cup we’ve given our players Theraguns, JetBoots, and the SmartGoggles so they have an environment where they can maintain this consistency. People think this World Cup is more intense than usual, but when you look at the numbers for October and next January, the games programme is more intense for us than the World Cup is. We play every three to four days at club level, so players are used to the process of ‘play, recover, play, recover’.
“We’ve encouraged players to just continue this process during the World Cup. Top professionals know what works for them and the key for us is for them to just maintain this. The Theraguns and JetBoots have become part of this routine for them.
“We take a very individual approach to recovery for our players – we’ve given them all the tools they can travel with.”
Baldwin added: “Recovery is a massive part of our world, and the biggest factor is consistency – all the best players are consistent in their recovery. Percussive therapy is a tool we use in the whole recovery process alongside things like nutrition and ice baths.
“There is no one size fits all approach. You can guide the players but only they know what inherently makes them feel better.
“There are so many different factors that go into why someone recovers so everyone’s process will be individual to them. When we got the Therabody products we didn’t force them on every player, but let them figure out by themselves if the products worked as part of their recovery process. We educated them on how the products worked but ultimately left them to self-discover.
“It was crazy how quickly things snowball from the players speaking and observing each other. With the JetBoots in particular, as soon as some of the players saw the lack of a wire they were all keen to try it out. When we travel, the boots are so much easier to use which made a lot of people interested in them. The guys are creatures of comfort and ease.”
If Walker manages to stop Mbappe on Saturday night, we know what to thank – the SmartGoggles, the JetBoots and the Theragun.
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