BIOMECHANIST Jean-Jacques Rivet not only works with golfers. He has helped a number of top rugby union players, and now has his sights set on some of the world's best footballers.
The finishing touches are being put to a football pitch and stadium area just outside the gates of the magnificent Terre Blanche Hotel and Spa, near Tourrettes in the south of France. It is a facility that will be given to the local community, but first of all it will host some rather important guests – the German national football team.
Joachim Low's players will use it as a training camp to prepare for the 2012 European Championships, which are being staged in Poland and Ukraine during the summer. The more alert among you might have realised by now that France and Germany have been drawn in the same group, but that will not stop Rivet, a patriotic Frenchman, from offering his expertise to the German players.
“In a football team, there always seems to be one player who is in charge of all the set-pieces, who takes all the free kicks, penalties and corners,” says Rivet, “but who is to say that the player who does these things is always the best man for it?”
So he will be using his knowledge and expertise, along with the hi-tech equipment used to analyse golf swings, to look at the way the German players kick the ball. That data will tell him, and Low, if they have the right players taking corners and free kicks, as well as demonstrating how technique can be improved.
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Rivet might have had a tough job persuading the likes of Michael Ballack that somebody else was actually better at striking a free kick from 25 yards than he was, but this is a young squad and Low is determined to leave no stone unturned in his search for perfection.
Germany finished third at the 2010 World Cup, putting four goals past England and Argentina, and qualified for the European Championships with a 100% record. Played 10, won 10, goals for 34, goals against seven, in a group that also featured Turkey and Belgium. But still they believe that they can do better.
Playmaker Mesut Ozil is a member of Jose Mourinho's Real Madrid team and, at 23, will be keen to take on board any new skills or improvements that Rivet can help him with. The same applies to teenage sensation Mario Gotze, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Lukas Podolski. By the time these players depart Terre Blanche, each will know precisely what he is capable of achieving – and Low may well be left to ponder some conundrums that he had not previously considered.
A total of 300 journalists have been accredited to follow the team to their French training base, so Rivet had better be prepared for the fact that a lot of attention is going to be coming his way. Initially, the German media may be sceptical about biomechanics – by the time the team leaves for Euro 2012, they will all be converts, as will the players.
Besides, was there ever a German team that took part in any sport without first being thoroughly prepared for every eventuality? To be the best they can possibly be is in the blood, part of their psyche.