My name’s Des Ryan and I’m the head of sports medicine and athletic development at the Arsenal Academy. Hector and I started within a similar timeframe. Hector was a 16-year-old who had just moved over from Barcelona and I was just starting out in my position. A lot of my sports science and medicine colleagues started at the same time, and we could all see that Hector was a player with huge ability.  He was a high-level player from the word go, and we knew we could help the progress of his natural talent with the benefits of sports medicine and athletic development, particularly in the area of movement, skills and strength. We used programmes based around functional competence,...
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