Players spend years playing in a World Cup, but a moment of singleness (a trip, an adjustment, a tear) can now leave them out of the tournament just a few days before the start.
Agony too strong? Just ask Ben Chilwell, Raphael Varane or Son Heung-min, who have seen their hopes of the tournament compromised by injuries sustained over the past two weeks.
Commercial
It is true that there are much bigger problems surrounding this World Cup, debatable for the reasons defined here. But Qatari organizers have called on enthusiasts and the media to deal with football itself. So, in this article, we will.
Does holding the tournament in winter mean that more players are likely to be missing than in past editions?
There’s an explanation for why players are more vulnerable to injury ahead of a Winter World Cup: a busier pre-tournament schedule and shorter warm-up camp, for example.
Leicester City manager Brendan Rodgers drew attention to this last Thursday, speaking about the injury to Chilwell, who played for him until 2020.
“For the players, this would possibly be their only chance to play in a World Cup,” he said. Prevent them from entering.
“You can argue and say it would be the same at the end of the season, but you get that stamp and that’s why we all thought the timing of this wasn’t ideal. “
But there is, in all honesty, a detail of recent bias in workouts like these. Heartbroken players are new in mind, while the injury to a replacement Honduran midfielder in 2010 (with all due respect to Julio César de León) is less. Most likely, he will be remembered for a long time.
That’s where knowledge comes in. Athletic reviewed the files, spoke to sports scientists and turned to the calculator to investigate how injuries were sustained compared to other tournaments. And those are the facts.
The tournament opens with Qatar facing Ecuador in less than two weeks, and The Athletic already registers 42 injuries among the thirteen favorites in the tournament.
Commercial
Of those 42 injuries, the vast majority (88. 1%) are muscle and soft tissue problems. There were hamstring injuries and 8 knee injuries.
England took a heavy hit on defence, with Reece James (knee), Kyle Walker (groin) and Ben Chilwell (hamstring) all threatened with missing the tournament. Defensive midfielder Kalvin Phillips has been out with a shoulder injury since mid-September.
France is another team with a series of injuries: the intensity of their team is arguably staggering for any other team in the tournament.
Midfielders N’Golo Kante and Paul Pogba, who in combination in the 2018 World Cup final, were ruled out with hamstring and knee problems respectively, while defenders Wesley Fofana (knee), Lucas Hernandez (adductor), Raphael Varane (thigh), and Jules Kounde (thigh) are all doubts.
In South America, Argentine forwards Angel Di Maria and Paulo Dybala are injured, and the latter, in particular, will not do so in Qatar, while Liverpool’s Brazilian midfielder Arthur Melo is permanently absent.
Last Thursday, German striker Timo Werner was shown to tear his ankle ligaments while playing for RB Leipzig opposite Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League. Hansi Flick’s team also faces possible injuries to Armel Bella-Kotchap (shoulder), Leroy Sane (thigh), Florian Neuhaus (knee) and Mahmoud Dahoud (shoulder).
Other players who will miss the tournament include Portuguese forwards Diogo Jota and Pedro Neto, as well as former Dutch captain Georginio Wijnaldum, who broke his leg in August.
This is the central question, and it may have barely been thought of when the tournament was awarded to Qatar in 2010: it was only moved to winter in February 2015.
Commercial
This, of course, is unprecedented. No tournament has had a shorter accumulation: the three-week adventure faced through groups that traveled to Uruguay for the first World Cup in 1930 can hardly be described as quiet.
How can a fair comparison be provided? Recent seasons have been decimated by COVID-19, leading to primary calendar flows. Athletic turned to Ben Dinnery, the founder of Premier Injuries, who compiled Premier League injury statistics over the past decade.
After rejecting a number of possible approaches, an imaginable solution was found. Using the Dinnery database, it is imaginable to calculate the number of players injured at the end of a season (i. e. before a summer World Cup takes place) and compare it with the number of players injured lately (i. e. just before the Qatar Cup World Cup).
Due to the longer preparation era before the Summer World Cup, knowledge filtered out small injuries that had a recovery time of a week or less.
This has produced attractive effects, but there is no concrete answer. Last weekend, 39 Premier League players had injuries that would keep them out for a week or more.
Looking at the knowledge of the season finale over the past five seasons (while the 2019-2020 season affected by COVID-19 is filtered out), that number sits in the middle.
Prior to the 2018 World Cup, 35 Premier League players would have been doubtful for the tournament (assuming all their nations qualified), while 2018–19, 2020–21 and 2021–22 saw 36, forty-five and 40 injuries respectively. Dinnery believes the number for 2020-21 will likely be the best due to the short pre-season after the Premier League allocation restarted, when last season ended in August.
According to their data, players are no more likely to be injured entering this World Cup than in recent summer tournaments.
But is this November exhausting? The World Cup schedule means that more games have been filled than ever before at the start of the season: teams will have played 15 games during the World Cup break, 4 more than last season.
According to Dinnery’s data, he has yet to cause any more injuries. There were 101 muscle and soft tissue injuries recorded in the first 10 weeks of the season (note: not in the weeks of play), with an average of 109. 75 in the last 4 seasons. Skip the 2020-21 crusade affected by COVID-19, the average is 99. 33, almost exactly the same as this season.
The case studies offer a similar picture. For example, England plays foreign matches in November, a mix of Nations League, World Cup qualifiers and friendlies. So far, 3 English players have been excluded from the World Cup (Ben Chilwell, Kyle Walker-Peters and Emile Smith Rowe), while another 3 are doubtful (Kalvin Phillips, Reece James and Kyle Walker). Last season, before World Cup qualifiers against San Marino, seven players withdrew from the squad.
With such a tight schedule, the common-sense technique is to think that more players are operating in the “hot zone” in November than towards the end of the season.
But also, players at the end of the season have more accumulated fatigue in their legs, so where is the answer, from a clinical point of view?
Robin Thorpe is a sports scientist who has worked for Manchester United for almost 10 years and most recently works at Red Bull clubs. He also helped Mexico’s national team ahead of the 2018 World Cup. He believes there is still no knowledge to show whether players are more likely to face the threat of injury around a Winter World Cup.
“Every challenge that has occurred in the last month will stand out,” he explains. A multitude of things that contribute to player injuries, which are very difficult to prove or even predict.
“I think some of the things we’re going to know in retrospect after the World Cup, however, we don’t know for sure if the injury narrative around this World Cup is true. Because the narrative used to be that there’s chronic fatigue at a summer World Cup, where players compete against each other after 10 months of competition.
“We are now in an era of transition. Ten years ago, players had a longer offseason break, and it’s getting smaller, especially for foreign players. Some players now play 12 months a year. Intuitively, one would think players would be cooler in the winter. But without a low season to rest, how do we know that?
The complexity of the factor is also highlighted through Chris Barnes, a sports scientist who has been hired through clubs such as Middlesbrough, West Bromwich Albion and Nottingham Forest, and lately works for UEFA.
“We’ve never noticed a mid-season World Cup,” he admits. “This era is a very congested era, and we’re seeing a slight buildup of what we might call preventable injuries: soft tissue injuries. “
GO FURTHER
Players out of the World Cup – or lacking Qatar
This location is also supported by Thorpe’s research, which found that the November era saw an increase in certain types of injuries.
“But it’s attractive because the World Cup is only a week before,” Barnes added. “The first week will be very discreet: they will try to reset the biological clocks, triumph over the tension of travel. Most will only be 3 months away from the season and deserve to be quite fresh.
“Because of the brief introduction, the purpose of each and every coach when you arrive at the site will be tactical preparation. Historically, in the eyes of some coaches, the long preparation for the 4- or five-week World Cup has been treated as a mini pre-season, in addition to an extensive season.
“We probably wouldn’t see that this time. We probably wouldn’t see injuries in education unless you’re not happy. “
Thorpe prefers to think of the threat of injury in terms of the sequence of the game, the varying differences between games, than the simplest measure of the time of year.
“A few years ago, when I was at Manchester United, there was a discussion about the Christmas period and the possibility of a winter break,” he said. “And we really started doing an in-depth analysis. It was not the number of games played, but the order of games during this Christmas period.
“You’re going to have a hard time accepting the winter versus summer plot without a thorough investigation of the sequence. Personally, I think the transition from the World Cup to the club leagues will be that key position. This is what the experts and narrative deserve to focus on, rather than prepare for, the tournament.
Although its precise definition differs from club to club, the “red zone” is a damaging point in a club’s recovery and fitness measures, which assess how close a player is to maximum functionality and their threat of injury.
For example, Liverpool players code by red, green or amber, reading how central indices and physical responses differ from previously measured baselines. The players’ mobility, jumping ability and isometric strength are also checked for any sophisticated symptoms of fatigue, while saliva can also be analyzed.
In all competitions, nine of the 10 players who have played the most minutes for Premier League clubs have the highest chance of advancing to the World Cup; the exception is Mohammed Salah.
Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk and Tottenham’s Hugo Lloris played each and every minute available, while England captain Harry Kane played just 14 minutes less. the 20 most sensible players are the Spurs.
Of the 50 players who have played the maximum minutes, 35 are imaginable World Cup teams, and can be considered as “in the red zone”.
However, clubs will also work with foreign groups to reduce the risk of injury, Barnes says. “In today’s game, every inch, every millimeter a player travels in the game is mapped and monitored.
“Not only the volume, but also the intensity and speed of the training. This is what is essential here. The task of the first days is to bring them to an unusual pace in an effective way. Representatives of foreign groups will have visited clubs and worked intensively with their counterparts.
“Teams have never been more prepared to cope with the demands of a World Cup than this one. They have more data, they have a more qualified and more provided staff. They have players who are more resilient and smarter than ever. “.
(Top design: Samuel Richardson)