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Football’s schedule is getting busier, cutting player recovery time

Player Workload News
16 July 2019

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Our report – At The Limit – examines this mounting problem.

We compiled statistics of 16 players from Europe, Asia, the Americas and Africa to find out exactly how much some top footballers are playing over a 12-month period.

Some played almost 80 games and traveled more than 100.000 kilometers.

At The Limit makes a series of key recommendations to protect the health of players, and make sure they can perform at their peak.

Some remarkable facts about some of the world’s top players:

  • Heung-Min Son (Tottenham Hotspur & South Korea) played 78 matches and travelled more than 110,00 kilometers to represent his national team.
  • Lasse Schӧne (Ajax & Denmark) had less than two weeks of vacation between the 2018 World Cup and the start of preseason training with his club
  • Ivan Rakitic (Barcelona & Croatia) played almost three-quarters of his 68 games without five days of rest in between recommended to perform at peak level and avoid injury
  • Sadio Mané (Liverpool & Senegal) played in 70 matches and travelled 100,000 kilometers to represent his national team, without the benefit of a mid-season break
  • Alisson Becker (Liverpool & Brazil) played 72 matches and travelled 80,000 kilometers to represent his national team, without the benefit of a mid-season break

“My body never got to recover. I ran out of energy”

— by Lasse Schӧne
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Lasse Schӧne, playing for Ajax in the 2018/19 season

our recommendations

  • Introducing mandatory off-season breaks of 4 weeks, and mid-season breaks of 2 weeks
  • Limiting the amount of times per season when players have back-to-back competitive games with less than the five days of recovery time in between
  • Considering whether to impose annual match caps for each individual player to protect his health and performance
  • Developing an early warning system to monitor player match load and assist with
    forward planning

 

“We don’t have enough vacation. We need a change of mentality, not just by one organization but by everyone.”

— by Alisson Becker (Liverpool & Brazil)
ATL 01 AB 01 (1)
Alisson Becker suffers an injury playing for Liverpool.

“46% of footballers who have 50 or more games say they are playing too much”

— by FIFPRO player survey, 2018

FIFPRO's recommendations are based on medical science research, including the following studies:

*Muscle injury rate in professional football is higher in matches played within 5 days since the previous match: a 14-year prospective study with more than 130,000 match observations (Hakan Bengtsson, Jan Ekstrand, Markus Walden, Martin Hagglund at Linkoping University,
2017)

*Playing too Many Matches is Negative for both Performance and Player Availability (Jan Ekstrand at Linkoping University, 2013)

*Elite football teams that do not have a winter break lose on average 303 player-days more per season to injuries than those teams that do: a comparison among 35 professional European teams (Jan Ekstrand, Armin Spreco, Michael Davison at Linkoping University, Aspetar Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Hospital in Doha and Isokinetic Medical Group in London, 2018)

ATL 01 AB 01 (1)
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