Soccer (Closing)

Could be all sorts of reasons or pure coincidence

Loads of teams doing mad presses. Its not too many games. Championship and below play tons and the players don’t get the same level of training etc.

Because the league is clamping down on time wasting/loss of play time

Causing players to play longer than they have ever done in the careers whether it be at pro or youth level

Are players running more? Are we learning to the longer term effects of super pressing? It’s not my leading suspicion but I think it could be a cause of it.

I’ve heard that the long wait times on VAR decisions are also potentially having an impact as players as cooling down whilst waiting int be ref, and then having to go back up to full speed almost instantly. Was pointed at a possible reason for Van Der Ven’s hamstring against Chelsea

The double digit stoppage times and super-long VAR stoppages we are seeing this year might have something to do with it.

Boot cleats design?

Aside from the reasons mentioned above there could be one more thing: players could be a little bit more careful with their bodies last year given an injury would rule them out from World Cup selection

Basically what Klopp has been complaining about since day one. But rival teams and fans like to make him look like a moaner. Guess everyone is finally catching up to what one of the best managers saw years ago. In an ideal world if we showed enough respect to each other, things would get sorted out much quicker.

Soft these days

Too many games yes, but I also wonder if all the VAR time has lead to more injuries as players didn't used to stand around for five minutes three times per half.

190 of them from Utd. If I don't laugh I'll cry lol.

They played almost extra time every games

I have no doubt that more games and more minutes aren't helping. But this article is extremely lacking on actual significant data.

Is a 15% one time event, significant in 4 seasons? Was it a trend going up or something? Why only use 4 years and not a longer trend?

I can't access the data, since the article doesn't mention it and the linked site only has current data.

The only thing they mention is this:

This season there has been an increase of about 96% for hamstring injuries compared to the last campaign, with 53 incidents - 26 more than during 2022-23.

Overall, it accounts to a 55% increase compared to the previous four-season average. The previous high was 40 hamstring injuries during the 2020-21 season.

Which is more evidence that 1 data point isn't really useful. We know that 2020-21 had 40, then 2022-2023 had 26, then 2023-2024 has 53... How can you claim anything with data like that?

We need to abolish the nations league first

Players getting fitter cardio wise. But legs can only take so much punishment before they give no matter how good your heart is. So all these distance covered metrics to strive for are probably causing injury

There was a real bad ACL curse over the first few weeks of the season. What are the chances mings does his ACL three days after Buendia did his, in a game where the players wore shirts before the game wishing emi a speedy recovery.

I remember after the third week of the season a number of players whose team pre seasoned in the states on those pitches seemed to do their ACLs.

Money more important than players health to FIFA UEFA and sky

the incredible amount of extra minutes at the end of games. Adding an extra 15 minutes a game after ten games is almost two whole other games. Added to that fact that folks tend to get injured when they are completely exhausted.

Hello December world cup, do you remember that BBC, you know when Gaz Lineker went over there to say what he thought etc?

Player contracts need an equivalent of "overtime" clauses; i.e.: anything above 50 games per year incurs a per-game appearance fee, bar any cup finals.

Perhaps even more granular with total minutes tracked.

The average amount of time with the ball in play is up 7.5% YoY (source: https://theathletic.com/4948795/2023/10/11/premier-league-added-time/), which would explain about half of the increase. You could argue a bit more, given the extra time is added at the end, when players are more tired.

World cup, fixture schedule etc I'm sure might also explain it - but looks like the change in how Injury Time is calculated - ironically - will have increased injuries

I wonder if its either covid or the covid vaccines, or both.

There is an article on ESPN that showed that injuries were up following the Winter WC.

Is 4 years enough of a sample to compare across?

So many teams pressing like a Klopp team...