Injury time: is there too much football?

Elite footballers are being treated "like entertainers, not performers", a coach working with a major Premier League club told The Athletic in March.

With the calendar of fixtures for top teams becoming ever more congested, it's "little wonder the game is starting to snap, mostly in the form of players’ hamstrings", said The Independent.

Breaking point

"Football is at a breaking point," said ESPN last August, at the start of the "longest-ever" season in the game's history. With a new Club World Cup adding to the "workload" of the top players and an expanded Champions League meaning eight group games rather than the previous six, players are having to deal with "more games, more competition" and "significantly less rest". And that comes with a corresponding impact on their "physical and psychological reserves".

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Speaking to the European Leagues General Assembly in March 2024, the Premier League chief executive Richard Masters said that it "stands to reason" that if you "overload the calendar and the players", eventually "something has to give".

The words proved prophetic: injury lists have been "getting longer and also staying like that for longer", in "direct correlation" with the increased fixture list, said The Independent. Data from the Premier League showed that 60% of hamstring-related injuries during the season had kept the player out of action for a month or more, while between 2019 and 2023, just 40% of such injuries kept a player out for such a long period of time.

The style of football as well as the amount of fixtures is also a contributing factor. The popularity of "pressing" tactics means many players are regularly covering the equivalent of six miles per game. There's also a financial imperative. With around 80% of wages going to star players, coaches "inevitably lean towards" trying to play their big signings as much as possible.

Training tweaks

FIFPro, the global footballers' union, working in conjunction with performance experts, said that professional players should not play more than 55 matches in a season. A study by FIFPro followed 1,500 professional footballers in various countries over the 2023/24 season and found that almost a third (31%) played more than the recommended 55 matches.

Unable to control the fixture demands, clubs are looking at what happens on the training field. Although it may appear counterintuitive, tests have suggested that overtraining can have a negative impact on performance. Some clubs have embraced the "less is more" mindset, with only two scheduled training sessions during two-game weeks. Liverpool have started to schedule longer but less intense sessions instead of shorter, tougher sessions.

But with the expanded 2026 World Cup looming, there's even the potential for industrial action. Footballers have "yet to collectively walk out in protest" over any issue, said ESPN, but there are "historical precedents" of strike action in the NBA and NFL.

"If no one is looking after you, you need to look after yourself," said Maheta Molango, CEO of the Professional Footballers' Association, the players' union in England. "If you don't protect the people who ultimately drive the industry, you're going to end up having a problem."