Does more minutes at a young age equal more muscle injuries later in a footballer's career?
With more and more debate in todays game about the amount of matches elite players have to play each season.
We will look and compare the minutes played from todays elites to the retired elites from previous years
Life as a footballer has many ups and downs which include the joy of promotion, winning titles and even just winning football matches. But the heartbreak for many footballers and more importantly young players who can now be vital to their clubs in achieving trophies and awards; is that they can play a few too many games and cause themselves harm.
The top teams and the top players in those team could play more than 60 or even 70 games per season and after the COVID lockdown it seems like the footballing world has been playing catch up to how the world was before this.
With more and more competitions being formed and changes to the European tournaments and leagues, it has caused players to have to play more games than ever seen before. Also with international games and friendlies happening over the course of the club season, players from all over the world will have to travel back around the world and their travel back and forth could add up to 100,000 kilometres person.
Players who will play mostly every game for their club and their country could play up to 6,000 minutes per season. However, the change of the three substitutions to five substitutions in the Summer of 2020 has become a way for the football world to combat the issue and frequency of player injuries.
Lionel Messi
The Argentinian has had arguably the most prestigious career that any footballer can dream of. From winning the seven Ballon D'ors, 12 league titles, four Champions Leagues, one World Cup and many more.
But it hasn't been all plain sailing for Messi as during his career has had unfortunate moments of missing many games due to injury and more importantly muscle injuries. At the start of his career when he was just 17 and 18, he wasn't available to Barcelona due to injuries and this was due his body still developing and growing. The graph shows that if he plays many minutes the season or seasons before he will see the effects of in the campaigns later down the line and later in his career when his minutes started to drop there was a decrease in games missed due to injury.
Will many of the world's elites and many players in the world hope to play in the top European leagues and when players from outside of Europe come and play in Europe they will more than likely play for their national teams.
The problems that can occur from this is that they will have further to travel when going to play for their county that could be located across the other side of the World. This occurs mostly as many South Americans have played in Europe and this will mean that they will have more travelling time, then this leads to these players not getting as much rest time due to travelling.
This has taken its toll on many players in recent years but most famously is Barcelona and Spanish midfielder Pedri, who at just 18 years old played 80 games of professional football and travelled across the world to do so. Ever since then he has operations and slowly brought back into both sides. But during the couple years he has had constant hamstring injuries that have kept him out.
Pedri playing for Barcelona (Getty Images)
Pedri playing for Barcelona (Getty Images)
Also when comparing the use of Pedri to Barcelona and the use of Phil Foden to Manchester City. By using the same format it has shown the difference gradually bringing a young player into the system will help them not get injured a much and allow them to develop.
Phil Foden (Getty Images)
Phil Foden (Getty Images)
Each Confederation has their own Champions League and set of leagues throughout their region. However, in recent years UEFA have added more competitions both domestically and internationally with the introduction of the Conference League and the Nations League. This means that many of the top European players will have to play more games than any other confederation which is shown on the table (right).
Throughout this research I believe that more games at a high level and at a young age when the body is still developing will lead to more injuries in the seasons following. Due to the age differences in major leagues and playing against fully grown men who are usually so much stronger than the young footballer coming through. And with research from South Wales University shows that 15 to 87% of all injuries were reported to be muscle injuries.
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