Josuha Guilavogui is a player with what Daniel Farke describes as “a proper CV”.
While his spells at Wolfsburg, Saint-Etienne, Atletico Madrid, Bordeaux and Mainz counted for a lot in making the 34-year-old attractive to Leeds United, his application and attitude counted for just as much. That was essential if Farke was to break his usual policy of not signing free agents outside the transfer window amid an injury crisis in defensive midfield.
At the centre of Farke’s concerns about signing free agents is match fitness and the ability of players arriving late to the squad to make a meaningful contribution while fitting in with the team ethos. But Leeds needed a defensive midfielder. Guilavogui covers that area and provides depth at centre-back. Remarkably, despite spending the summer out of contract, he was named on the bench in the 0-0 draw at Bristol City two days after signing for the club.
But how hard is it for a free agent to get up to speed and are United likely to see him used in the Championship soon?
“When you’re under contract, you are part of a team, but you’re self-employed,” says Luke Anthony, clinical director at sports injury and human performance centre GoPerform and former head of medical at Reading and Watford. “That mentality is more important than ever when you’re in that situation. Nowadays, you have players of all ages who are out of contract. But a lot of them don’t have the experience of being independent in terms of how you look after yourself, to design a programme and implement it yourself to keep fit.”
Since leaving Mainz in the Bundesliga in May, Guilavogui has worked hard to stay in shape with hopes of joining a new club. He has been in this position before — a year ago at the end of his contract at Wolfsburg, he did enough to earn a deal until the end of the season at Mainz.
He did the same this summer, committing to an individual off-season programme. Enrolling in an intense training camp in Dubai before signing for Leeds has put him in a strong position. That involved a trip to Dubai to join up with elite training and fitness company SPS Performance’s head coach Nic St-Maurice. And this set him on the path to his deal at Elland Road.
“They all have different starting points,” says St-Maurice. “Josuha, when he started working with us, he had been working in the gym and doing running by himself. But he’d done less time on the pitch because, by yourself, it’s more complicated. Depending on what they need and the stage they are at with their fitness, some guys will come to us and go out on the pitch three or four times a week. Some will do less but more in the gym if they are coming back from injury and they might do treatment with our guys, too. The pitch sessions are becoming more popular because it’s more fun to train with other players.
“It’s more competitive and better for everybody. We keep the groups small in general, between four and six players. On this occasion, we had all first-division players looking for new teams working together, all from different countries. It’s more fun for them to work together and because of the friendly competition, when they’re doing sprints or drills, they push a bit harder each time. When they’re doing the aerobic and cardio work, they get better results.”
‘Fitness’ is a broad term in football and most often match fitness is dictated by an ability to take part in regular intense training for newly signed free agents. While aerobic training is easier to maintain for individual players when they are free agents, replicating the sprints and changes of direction involved in club training is harder to achieve. When free agents step into club training and take part in those actions, it brings injury risk.
“There’s injury risk even when a player is transferring from club to club (not as a free agent),” says Anthony, who worked as an injury prevention specialist at Norwich City. “Injury risk occurs with transition anyway, but if the transition is from working individually to working with a club, that’s a risk for sure. The hardest things to replicate are the high-intensity things like sprints and the intensity that comes when you train in a team. During Covid, when players were training alone, we noticed an uptick in muscle injury when they returned to play because a lot of players hadn’t been able to expose themselves to the high-intensity work. The hamstring muscle group is one where if you haven’t been able to get up to top speed sprinting, acceleration, deceleration, change of direction, it’s hard to replicate that on your own without any competition or anyone driving you.”
Last season after signing for Mainz, Guilavogui faced a period on the sidelines after a thigh injury in his second appearance for the club. Balancing the needs of the team and the willingness of an individual player to make an impact over their readiness for matches is always a challenge for medical staff. The fact that Farke, though impressed by Guilavogui’s fitness, has made clear he knows his new signing is not yet “100 per cent” reflects a considered approach.
Guilavogui has been a free agent for four to five months. Over a comparable absence for an injured player, a typical return to playing plan might involve two to three weeks of training before a practice or youth game to act as a gradual reintroduction.
“You’re never going to replicate match play, it’s hard to even replicate training to the same level,” says Anthony. “But the aim is to get them to a level where the transition is as close as possible, to get them to bed in with the group. You just cannot replicate a game. You could use output data from a Premier League midfielder who runs 11km a game and monitor their high-speed running and get a player to do the same. Getting that intensity of accelerations, under competitive pressure, is the really hard side of it. It’s impossible really.”
When Guilavogui is ready to make his Leeds debut, Farke has a player with great physical assets at his disposal. In a few weeks’ training in Dubai, he impressed alongside under-contract players looking to maintain their fitness over the international break.
“He is a serious professional player,” says St-Maurice. “He was already at a good fitness level. He’s tall, when you look at his body type — similar to when I worked with Antonio Rudiger at Real Madrid — when you look at them, you don’t know how strong they actually are. But when they’re pushing people around and moving weights in the gym, you realise how strong they are. I was surprised, we do sprints at the start of each workout to get everything fired up and he was winning the races. He was against seven other top players including some who are in season and playing games who were training with us during the international break and Josuha was beating them. I was impressed that he was right up there after a few months just training by himself.”
When he is ready, Farke and Leeds are likely to need Guilavogui to provide depth in areas where they are short. The Championship demands rotation and fresh legs — after a period of hard work, Guilavogui could add an extra dimension to United’s hopes of winning promotion.
(Top photo: Leeds United)
