On Saturday 25, Sunday 26 and Monday 27 May at Civitas Metropolitano, the home of Atletico, the XXXI Isokinetic Congress will be staged on the theme ‘Football Medicine: a bridge between science and practice’. Under the lens of doctors and scholars, neuroscience in its relationship with biomechanics. Among the speakers is also the Director of Isokinetic Turin, Dr. Fabrizio Tencone

In Madrid, in the temple of ‘Cholo’ Simeone's Atletico, there is Isokinetic playing another Champions final. Since we are talking about the XXXI edition of the Congress of Traumatology and Sports Rehabilitation, which is a global flagship, Isokinetic, with the sole organisation of the event, has been raising that trophy to the sky since at least 2012, that is, since the opening of its London office, when it set up the prestigious gathering at Stamford Bridge, in the home of Chelsea. After Stamford Bridge it was the turn of Wembley and Camp Nou. And now the conference's highly scenic stage will rise in the prestigious and hyper-technological setting of the stadium that hosts Madrid's other footballing half, that Civitas Metropolitano which is the home ground of Atletico, the club that eliminated Simone Inzaghi's Inter Milan from the Champions League race in March.

Speaking of Champions League: Isokinetic has been attending it for years, periodically gathering in its Congress the world elite of doctors, surgeons and rehabilitators. But Isokinetic does not live off the past and has always ventured into unexplored fields, seeking, where possible, to accelerate the pace. That is why in the title of the Congress organised with the collaboration of FIFA, ‘Football Medicine: a bridge between science and practice’, is written the ‘mission’ of the three days in Madrid. It has been calculated that an average of seventeen years elapse from a scientific discovery to its practical application. A very long time, even for the world of football, which is striding towards the future while always having to reckon with the health of its athletes. This is what the two hundred and fifty speakers from all over the world will be talking about, ready to illustrate some five hundred scientific contributions. Registrations for the Congress have reached a record three thousand, representing some eighty nations. With neuroscience, as mentioned, taking centre stage. Isokinetic has long studied the interactions between the anatomical structures of the brain, with their functional mechanisms, and biomechanics. ‘Today we know that many injuries occur in the presence of a cognitive perturbation, i.e. the difficulty that a footballer on the pitch has in suddenly adapting his athletic or technical gesture to an unforeseen scenario, such as a sudden change of direction or a feint of play,’ explains Francesco Della Villa, director of the Isokinetic Study Centre. At the Congress, eloquent images will be shown of footballers who injure their anterior cruciate of the knee in a clumsy attempt to ‘react’ to an unforeseen, because sudden, movement of their opponent. Fatal fractions of a second in which the movement of the defender's leg, for example, fails to keep up with the playing strategy of the person who has the ball between his feet. ‘That's why many injuries also occur in the defensive phase,’ Della Villa explains.

The new frontier of injury prevention, and consequently of rehabilitation, will therefore be to bring neuroscience and biomechanics into closer dialogue, providing footballers and coaches with the tools they need to limit the risk of injury.

Dustin Grooms, a lecturer at Ohio University and one of the speakers at the Congress, has been doing this for a few years now by initiating joint research projects with Isokinetic. Francesco Della Villa, son of the founder and president of the Isokinetic Group Stefano, is this year's president of the Congress together with Andrew Massey, FIFA Medical Director and representative of the world football governing body. At the Civitas Metropolitano the city of Turin will take the field with the team of doctors and re-educators from the Isokinetic centre in Via delle Orfane, led by its Director Dr. Fabrizio Tencone.