footballers want to play fewer matches – Liberation

Well paid but still exploited. Footballers want competition organizers to listen “the players and what their bodies make us hear”. The Fifpro union representing professional football players around the world is therefore calling for a “urgent reform” international football to put an end to the crazy pace imposed by the multiplication of meetings. A recurring request from Fifpro. “The pressure on the health of players reveals the governance crisis of our sport”, with “an outdated model that sees players as resources,” explains the union, which is based on a study of a thousand players.

Carried out between October and December 2021 with 1,055 professional players and around a hundred experts (coaches, doctors, scientists, physical trainers), it shows that 54% of the players questioned admitted to having suffered an injury due to busy schedule.

Fifpro claims that since 2018, 41% of the footballers on its panel have already played 10 games in a row at least once without ever having more than four days off between two games. The most unsustainable pace goes to Luka Modric (Real Madrid), who has played up to 24 games in a row without having more than four days of rest between two of them during the 2020-2021 season, four times more that the “maximum recommended”. Luka Modric is also playing against Liverpool this Saturday at the Stade de France, in the Champions League final with Real Madrid.

The union is also concerned about the shortening of the off-season periods. Less than a third of players surveyed had at least four weeks off in the offseason in 2019-20 and 2020-21. And some extreme cases worry the organization, such as that of the Spaniard Mikel Oyarzabal, who only had a six-day break between the Olympics and the resumption of training at Real Sociedad last summer.

Notable psychological effects

This accumulation of fatigue would also have significant psychological effects, according to the Fifpro study: 82% of the experts questioned observed mental health problems concerning players who were victims of an overloaded schedule.

«We are athletes, not machines. Our bodies and our minds have natural limits. When we do too much or rest too little, we break down”alert professional players in a forum, represented in particular by several big names, such as Leonardo Bonucci, Jonathan David and Arturo Vidal.

The consequences on the health of footballers are very real. “For the past six months, I have played without anterior cruciate ligament”, says Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the former PSG striker now in Milan. “Swollen knee for six months. […] I had over 20 injections in six months. They had to dry my knee once a week for six months. I took painkillers every day for six months. I hardly slept for six months because of the pain. I have never suffered so much, on and off the pitch“, he details on Instagram.

To play, some professional footballers receive injections of painkillers directly into the joints, especially the knee. Once the career is over, the consequences can be terrible. In March, Bruno Rodriguez, the former PSG and Bastia striker, resigned himself to having his right leg amputated. “Following all the infiltrations that I made during my career, the sprains that I had, we tried to repair, more or less, what was possible and it could not be done.he said to the Republican East. But there, I was in too much pain. I had no more life. So we made the decision to cut. I was at a standstill. I couldn’t do anything anymore, I couldn’t drive anymore, I couldn’t go out. It wasn’t easy. The last few years have not been pleasant.»