Whatever happened to Andres Guardado?

In April of 2008, after playing a full 90 minutes in a midweek friendly playing for México in London and then topping that with a weekend match against Real Murcia, Andres Guardado re-injured his right leg in the biceps femoral muscle; his hamstring. It was a painful injury, the second to that part of the leg within the span of two months, and it would end a promising start to his second full year in Spain. The player was mystified, ¨I have never had any kind of injury, and now there have been two straight. This is brand new for me, but I have to move forward. It´s sad to lose almost the whole second half to the season, especially with what´s happening at the club (a relegation battle), but I´m young and I have a lot to look forward to.¨ It is interesting to note that when questioned about the possibility of it being a chronic injury, club doctor Ramón Barral said that, ¨It wasn´t common, so we are hopeful that won´t happen.¨

Unfortunately, that is exactly what has happened. The last two years have been marred by niggling injuries to both legs, muscular injuries all, where he has lost the equivalent of an entire league season if all the absences were added together- a total of 39 league games. A career that started at Club Atlas of Guadalajara with huge promise for the kid known as the ¨The Little Prince¨ has been mired in injury, questions about his preparation and his training keep coming up, and frankly those questions return often to the manner in which he is prepared either for club or country. Miguel Ángel Lotina has blamed El-Tri´s doctors and vice versa, but the answer might be even simpler than that.

There was another kid who came out of his boyhood club with that similar burst of lightning-pace, who could take on defenders with a quick feint off the ball and a directness that would scare an entire back-line. He became a media-darling, a star for both club and country, and drew attention from some of the great sides in Europe. He scored at will. Then, after carrying the weight of expectation for an entire country and playing almost non-stop for two years straight coming into Euro 98 (still a teenager in fact) Michael Owen´s body started breaking down with the sort of niggling muscle injuries, hamstrings primarily, that sapped his pace and dulled his impact on the world stage.

Now, I´m not comparing Guardado and Owen in the terms of skill-level, or effectiveness really because they play very different positions, but at their prime both players used their fast-twitch muscle fibers to gain an advantage over defenders. Over time, and especially with the sort of abuse that all players get both on the field (tackling), and off the field (lack of rest), it is not surprising that Andrés Guardado has struggled with recurring hamstring injuries. I would love to see him recover his form. He is an often brilliant player (and one of the few stars that I have actually seen play live in Spain) but his story is an all-too frequent one. These players are like Ferraris, in need of constant care and attention, and we are treating them as if they were Rally-Car racers.