למה נפצעים במונדיאל? פרק 1 הכנה למונדיאל

A series of articles in preparation for the 2026 World Cup - Chapter 1 Why are there more injuries in modern football than in old-fashioned football? Every week it seems like another star joins the list of injured players who will miss the games this summer. One day it's a torn cruciate ligament, the next day it's a hamstring strain and the week after that another muscle injury. Fans complain that players have become softer, coaches blame the schedule and medical professionals talk about unprecedented workloads but are there really more injuries? Yes. Much more. And ahead of the 2026 World Cup, the biggest tournament in the history of the sport, it's worth understanding what's really happening to the body of the modern footballer and why more and more players are "breaking down". Before we try to explain why this is happening, we need to understand the scope of the phenomenon. A study examining the French Ligue 1 found that the 2023/24 season saw a 22.6% increase in the number of injuries compared to the previous season. Specifically, muscle and ligament injuries jumped from 163 to 226 cases - an increase of 38.6%. A similar trend was also observed in England. The Premier League saw a 15% increase in the number of injuries in the 2023/24 season, which joins a general trend of an increase in the number of injuries each year. A good example that reflects the situation is the state of hamstring injuries. In the early 2000s, hamstring injuries accounted for about 12% of all injuries in elite football, and in the 2021/22 season they already accounted for 24% of all injuries. In other words, the rate of mastering injuries has doubled in two decades, while at the same time their relative share of all days of absence has increased from 10% to 20%. And all this is happening because today's football is simply a different game. When we see a game from the 80s or 90s, it's hard not to notice the difference. Today's game is faster, more intense, more athletic, and most importantly, demands much more from the players. If once a player could "hide" for large parts of the game, today almost every position on the field requires active participation in pressure, passing, and attacks. In the past, they thought that the important measure was the distance the player covered, but today we know that what is more important is acceleration, braking, and changes of direction. And a sprint at 34 km/h creates significantly greater loads than hundreds of meters of running at a moderate pace. The problem is that the sprint itself is only half the story. The higher the speed and the greater the changes in speed, the greater the load. So the increase in game speeds leads almost directly to an increase in muscle injuries. In the Premier League, the number of sprints increased by 80% and the total sprint distance increased by 35% in just six seasons (2006/07–2012/13). At the same time, hamstring injuries continued to climb and now account for about 24% of all injuries in European elite football. That is, a modern player may not run many more kilometers than a player 25 years ago, but he performs many more actions that load the muscles, tendons and joints. Football has changed but the human body has not. And although money has also changed and with it technology, tactics and load management, but all this Not enough to make up for the fact that the human body has not evolved in the last 20 years. You can think of it like taking an engine designed for a speed of 120 km/h and asking it to drive at 180 km/h regularly. Eventually something bad will happen. And if that's not enough, you also play more. A senior player playing for a top European team and the national team can reach about 75 official games in one season, even before pre-season and exhibition games. And a player who participates in all the frameworks, with the World Cup this year, can reach a season that is about 354 days long a year, so even the rest between seasons was taken away from them. Recovery has become the rarest resource and when you play every three or four days, that window is closing. And what does all this mean for the 2026 World Cup, the largest in history with 48 teams, 104 games, three host countries and an intense schedule of games that lasts a crazy month and is full of flights? A mess. Almost Every factor that we know that increases the risk of injury will appear in this tournament, so the biggest advantage in the upcoming World Cup may not be the best star, the most sophisticated tactics, but the ability of the national teams to keep their players healthy. This is the first of 5-6 episodes of preparation for the World Cup and more videos that I will make about the injuries that will occur during the tournament. So stay tuned, it's going to be a tough tournament. Good luck In my new lecture "Injuries that changed sports" I explain significant injuries that made cultural and constitutional revolutions in sports. I lecture in other areas, from injury preven...