Football surgeons are certainly super angels that look after the well-being of footballers when they picked up an injury.
Football as a contact sport often goes hand-in-hand with an injury which is quite understandable, but when a footballer picks up an injury surgeons always come to the rescue.
One undeniable fact about every profession is that each has its own great hands who are quite good and well qualified at what they do, and when talking about football surgeons the five names on this list deserve their place in here.
Here Are 5 Of The Best Football Surgeons
- Michael Gerhardt – (USA)
Dr. Gerhardt is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon who specializes in sports medicine, which includes arthroscopic surgery of the hip, knee, ankle, and shoulder.
He joined the Santa Monica Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Group in 2002, where he’s also practiced as a surgeon treating elite athletes who are plagued with either hip, knee, or ankle injury. Gerhardt is considered one of the leading doctors in his country having completed sub-specialty training in hip arthroscopy.
The California-born surgeon isn’t just considered the best in his country, he also has extensive experience in cutting edge, minimally invasive techniques for treating a wide spectrum of hip injuries.
Gerhardt currently serves as the team physician for the US Soccer Men’s National Team, the Los Angeles Galaxy, and Pepperdine University. He also has numerous publications in scientific orthopedic journals and he’s frequently on the podium giving lectures on various surgical topics.
- James Calder – (England)
When you hear Calder we’re not just talking about a mere doctor, Calder is a British orthopedic surgeon who specialized in sporting injuries and over the years he’s built an impeccable reputation for treating foot and ankles injuries of top professional athletes both in the English Premier League, Paris Saint Germain, AC Milan, Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Marseille.
He was responsible for restoring Neymar back into full fitness when he picked up an injury, and he even acknowledge that when he was entrusted to look after a big name like Neymar he was nervous due to the baggage that comes with the injury but he was able to restore the Brazilian.
“When you’re first entrusted to look after a big name, you are nervous. And it’s a challenge because there’s a lot of other baggage that comes with that injury,” Professor Calder
“The injury is attached to a very important, highly demanding athlete. And that athlete is worth an awful lot of money to other people. I think in the early days I was very much aware of it.
Now I’ve become immune to the cost of the patient and I can hone it back to the importance of the relationship between the injury and the patient.”
The experience orthopedic surgeon is also a founding member of the largest group of private sports clinics Fortius Clinic where he works as a consultant orthopedic foot and ankle surgeon.
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- Sakari Orava – (Finland)
Finland is a Scandinavia country well renowned for producing one of the best sports doctors the world has ever seen due to how sound and well qualified they’re, and among those doctors is one notable name Sakari Orava who elite athletes seek when the arm of injury caught up with them.
One of the world’s leading sports and football surgeons, Orava has performed more than 25,000 surgeries in a career that included serving as a doctor with team Finland at four Summer Olympics and also spent 32 years as the national track and field squad’s physician.
Notable athletes like Ousmane Dembele, Haile Gebrselassie, Beckham, and Merlene Ottey are just a few names whom he has treated and as a matter of fact, various publications refer to him as the Dr. House of sports medicine for his ability to swiftly diagnose and correct problems others can’t detect.
Orava’s colleagues respected him so much for his knack in taking up cases that seem unachievable, and in the end, he always found a way in solving such cases and alone makes him one of the most coveted football surgeons.
The Finnish surgeon only practices in the four walls of his country, albeit, he has clinics in Rome and Barcelona and he has won several awards from his patients and the clubs he helped restore their players into full fitness.
- Andy Williams – (England)
Andrew Williams is another well-qualified surgeon who has also treated hundreds of players in his 20-year career as an orthopedic surgeon. Williams is well known for treating professional athletes especially footballers and he specialized in ligament injuries alone.
The Fortius Clinic co-founder which is one of the United Kingdom’s single largest orthopedic groups with an international reputation in sports injury treatment is so good that he was named in The Times 2011 list of Britain’s top surgeons because of the brilliant job he’s been doing.
In his over 20 years at the top of his profession, he’s treated more than hundreds of elite athletes who later thank him for his astuteness. Williams has been so impeccable with his profession that they even credited his name with two different squads he’s treated and restored to the pitch without any forms of complications.
Williams as a doctor in professional sport is well in tune with the kind of pressure the players face when it comes to swift recovery from injury, as such he treats his clients with maximum concentration and respect and never leaves them to themselves paying attention until they return to the pitch.
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- Ramon Cugat – (Spain)
L’Aldea born Cugat is a well-renowned orthopedic surgeon who has fixed quite a number of footballer’s injuries. The Messi of medicine according to those he’s treated is so good that every player that went under the knife in his care trusted and respected him a lot.
Cugat first ventured into sports medicine in 1992 during the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, with a team of orthopedic surgeons, and since then his trajectory as a surgeon has been on the upward spiral, which also cumulated into him operating on over thousands of players such as Kevin de Bruyne, Laporte, Gundogan, amongst others.
In the 1997-98 season, LaLiga attempted to recruit him on their staff list but he declined to state that “In a club, I would see a pair of broken cruciate ligaments in about three years but here you see hundreds”.
He’s currently the co-director of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery and Traumatology Hospital Quiron Barcelona and chairman of the board of the Garcia Cugat Foundation for Biomedical research.
Cugat’s geniuses is well recognized among his clients all around the globe, as none of them have had any complaints before or after their surgery under his watch which makes them refer to him as the best in the world.
Conclusion:
We want to believe that they’re quite a number of football surgeons scattered around the globe. However, Cheapgoals mentioning just five don’t necessarily mean others aren’t good enough or they’re not qualified.
The listed five above stand out amongst others due to their track records and the kind of clients they’ve restored to full fitness.
