Atalanta star Gianluca Scamacca has become the latest Italy player to suffer an anterior cruciate ligament injury, suffering in part due to the scheduling of modern football.
The 25-year-old Italian forward was carried off the pitch in Sunday evening’s pre-season friendly with Parma, having fallen awkwardly on the turf after his studs caught. Medical tests later confirmed that he’d torn multiple ligaments in his left knee.
Scamacca will now be out of action for Atalanta for at least five to six months, completing derailing his 2024-25 season. This blow comes at a particularly painful time for the 25-year-old, considering that he was just hitting his stride in Bergamo and represented Italy at Euro 2024.
Scamacca the latest Italy victim
Unfortunately for Scamacca and Italy, anterior cruciate ligament injuries have been a plague of the Azzurri in recent years, robbing the national team of up-and-coming players on regular occasion.
Particularly salient examples include Federico Chiesa, who missed almost 12 months of football in 2022, and Nicolo Zaniolo, who suffered back-to-back cruciate ligament tears in 2020 and 2021.
The issue is so problematic that Atalanta were already dealing with a case, having lost Giorgio Scalvini to the injury in the final game of their 2023-24 season, which forced the talented defender to pull out of the European Championship.
Once a rarity in Italian football, serious ligament injuries are now proving increasingly concerning for the Azzurri, with many believing that players like Chiesa and Zaniolo never managed to recapture their magic after their respective issues.
One common thread linking all these players is their heavy work loads across a season, barely having a chance to rest amidst the league and the cup, as well as possibly the Supercoppa and any European competition. This doesn’t even include international level.
In the 2023-24 season, Scamacca saw over 2300 minutes of action across 44 matches for Atalanta, not including friendlies or international fixtures. Only 13 days after finishing the Serie A season, the striker was on the pitch for Italy’s Euro 2024 opener against Albania.
Only weeks after the tournament concluded, the 25-year-old returned to Atalanta’s pre-season training camp, taking part in exercise work and friendlies, starting his 2024-25 season.
The current situation will only continue to exacerbate, especially with FIFA’s revamped Club World Cup adding more travel and games to the schedules of top-level players, giving them even less time to rest and recover as the modern pace of the game continues to increase.
For Scamacca, he’ll be hoping to follow in the footsteps of Riccardo Calafiori rather than Chiesa, with the former completing recovering from the cruciate ligament rupture he suffered with Roma back in 2018.
For Italy, the pressure is now on players like Mateo Retegui, Giacomo Raspadori and outside candidates like Andrea Pinamonti to step up and prove themselves, needing to give the national team a source of goals following the Atalanta striker’s injury.
Time to invest and perform some stem cel therapy on a regular basis. Let’s go
Maybe they are doing the wrong kind of leg training. They should protect their knees with some ATG split squats and sled training. Knees over toes guys!
Zaniolo had barely even played 50 games the first time it happened 😂 Scamacca was warming the bench in London and also not overused at Atalanta. modern football😂 ridiculous.
Some players have chocolate for bones, muscles and ligaments. Matter of luck.
I hope Scamacca recovers well. In the meantime Italia will need to look at a string centre forward . Tifosi may not like it , but Balotelli even at his age should not be overlooked e basta!