The comparatively short time that Dastan Satpayev has spent playing for the Lancashire side, Burnley FC, has shown fans enough of his class to reassure them that they have taken a very talented player on loan in what now threatens to be a tough season.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that the Kazakh forward has been injured for much of the time he could have been helping the Clarets pick up vital points, and even in the absence of the facts surrounding his setbacks, it stands to reason that acclimatising to the dank north-west of England may not be something that Satpayev will find easy.
Playing a summer season in a beautiful country which is largely dry, warm, and very hospitable isn’t the best climatic preparation for a season in the cold and damp of the grim north of England. This reputation England has for rain is only semi-merited, as rain in the UK is nothing like as frequent as people believe. But the mugginess, cold, and pervasive dampness are almost always something to factor in for professional sportspeople whose long-suffering physios know that injuries are more likely in conditions like this.
According to OSSM Orthopaedic Care in Idaho:
Cold muscle injury risk increases sharply when low temperatures reduce flexibility, slow muscle response, and limit blood flow. These changes explain why winter athletes experience muscle strains and tears more often at the start of activity and during sudden movements.
This is largely intended to be advice for practitioners of winter sports and is not a definitive guide anyway. Nor does their advice refer to soccer, as they would call it over there. Many continental Europeans and South Americans, not to mention Africans, have spent years playing injury-free football in England, so this situation, if it is even true, should pose no permanent problems for Dastan Satpayev, who simply picked up a couple of knocks. That could have happened to anybody.
This website also offers the suggestion that damp conditions increase the risk of injury.
This article is not a diagnosis, nor does it represent medical advice, which is going to be far better taken from the professionals working with the player. It is merely the opinion of somebody who grew up in the perpetual soggy damp and mist of north-western England and now enjoys the Almaty sunshine all year round. And speaking as a cyclist active in both parts of the world – picking up muscle strains with depressing regularity in the former and never a twinge in the latter.
You see, in Burnley, as well as most of the UK, the miserable, clammy weather that starts some time around early September and endures until maybe the end of August means that nagging injuries are going to be more of a risk for a player who spent his youth career playing in one of the most favourable climates anywhere in the world.
