Injuries are soaring as load increases in the Premier League

Gabriel Magalhaes, the starting center back for Arsenal, was just one week away from playing the Champions League quarterfinal against 15-time champions Real Madrid when he started limping in the middle of a game. Just a few minutes later he went down with a hamstring injury that will take him out of the quarterfinals.

It is the type of injury that teams have suffered from over the past few years that has required more recovery time after an increase in the number of games, leading the players to their breaking point.

From new rules last year increasing injury time to the new formatting in European competition providing more games, the increase in load has led to players missing over 600 more games in the 2023-24 season compared to 2020-21.

There are seven Premier League teams in European competitions that can play anywhere from 48 games to 71 games a season. Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola states, “more than 50 games is too much for the players in the season.”

Playing more games has extended the amount of time players are out injured. According to Premier Injuries, between the 2020-21 and 2023-24 Premier League seasons, there have been 56 fewer injuries, yet players have missed over 6700 more days throughout the 23-24 season. Previously, players were out for just under 26 days per injury, while the more recent stats show players were out for over 38 days on average.

Players missing more games leads to Premier League clubs not being able to compete at their best. One major cause of extended time out has been hamstring injuries, which have increased immensely over the past few seasons.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, “hamstring injuries can occur in a number of ways, the most common is through overstretching.” Overstretching can happen through running, lunging, sprinting, and jumping when playing sports such as soccer and with more volume, there is a higher chance that injury can occur.

From the 2019-20 season to the 2023-24 season, the amount of hamstring injuries has increased by almost 20%. The hamstring injuries have increased from an average of 37 days to 85 days injured.

Players in the Premier League compete in four different competitions: the league, the FA Cup, the Carabao Cup and one of the European competitions. Those European competitions are run under UEFA, which expanded this year, going from 32 teams to 36, including two extra games in the first round and having an extra knockout round for 16 of the teams. In total, up to four extra games are added on top of all the other games and competitions, playing 48 to 71 games depending on how successful the club is in knockout competitions.

Games are being extended due to injury time, which is the time added at the end of each half for delays in the game. Rules that extended injury time were first implemented at the 2022 Qatar World Cup and have carried over to the Premier League. Stoppages in play are now being more accurately calculated rather than rough estimates of how much time it is. This extra injury time has increased the game length by more than five minutes between the 2020-21 and 2023-24 seasons. This is an extra five minutes added to when players are the most tired and more likely to get injured.

Red Bull’s Head of Global Soccer and former Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp criticized the lack of a break due to the expansion of the world cup “I think it’s useless. It doesn’t help if you have no summer break,” he said.

Although people are voicing their concerns, FIFA is expanding the World Cup for 2026 with 16 more teams and 40 more matches than in Qatar. FIFA also has the Club World Cup that provides even more games for some Premier League players. The competition takes place three weeks after the Premier League season is over. Instead of years prior, where the Premier League teams only played two games, now it is a whole tournament with pool play and knockout rounds, teams playing a maximum of six extra games.

The intensity of the games has also increased, with players running more per game and increased sprints per game as well. Tottenham Hotspur’s new manager, Ange Postecoglou and his players are now running further and doing more sprints per 90 minutes compared to other clubs. Before Postecoglou arrived at the club, they had a hamstring injury rate of about 12%, but once he came in, it increased to 30%. They sit only behind Brighton for most injuries in the Premier League. This means it is not only the number of games but also the rate and intensity that some teams are playing at in the games.

The 2024 Ballon d’Or winner, Rodrigo Hernández Cascante, better known as Rodri, was asked if the hectic schedule could lead to players going on strike. “I think it’s the general opinion of the players … I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s something that worries us because we are the guys that suffer.”

As teams struggle to keep healthy with this packed schedule, some, like manager Mikel Arteta are on edge. “It is an accident waiting to happen,” he said.

Cover Image: fabriziorom on Instagram