So, I'm getting old and perhaps my memory is fooling me, but when I watched and played football in the 60s and 70s players would routinely kick lumps out of each other with little more than a stern look from the officials. Despite this, I don't remember there being as many frequent, and/or prolonged spells of injury for so many players as there are these days. Modern training regimes produce better athletes, but does it make them more fragile? Are they stretched to the limit like finely-tuned racehorses and just snap easily? Or are they all just big babies who cry at the merest hint of pain? I spent most of my (extremely modest) playing days keeping my face as far away from the grass as I possibly could, but these days players seem to like falling over and have even developed it into a fine-art. Perhaps if they wore proper shin-pads and didn't play in carpet slippers it might help, but despite the rules evolving continuously to reduce injury from dangerous play it seems to be having the reverse effect. Or is it just me?
Think arguments for both sides. I’d probably say that with the game being so much faster and athletic these days, if your not 100% fit it shows a lot more than maybe it did back in the 70-90s etc. The medical side is a huge part of the clubs these days and they often dictate to manager who can / can’t play where as before you’d prob just ask the player and they’d say he’s fine. On the flip side, some probably are more inclined to sit out rather than risk playing. With the money being paid, you know even if you miss a few games, it’s not really going to have huge impact. Still earning **** load of money. Back then, if you kept missing games due to injury, would it impact a contract you’d get there or elsewhere? Didn’t earn life changing money from 1 contract so maybe had to be seen to be available every game to make sure you got the best deal you could?
Maybe football boots and shins pads are getting thinner and thinner and offer less protection. In the current day and age, clubs and players have access to so much data regarding their condition so any slight knock can be detected (even if it causing a real issue) but coaches may not want to risk of reinjury or making the injury any worse.
Good point re financials. There is so much money in the game now that players futures are literally dependant on playing so they don't want to jeopardise that.
1. I think personally they cover more ground at higher speeds it impacts on these pulls and tears.The 60s and 70s players played more games and had lumps kicked out of each other but didn't run about as fast imo. 2. The protective gear is also total **** these days. the boots are slippers with sharp blades on the bottom. I think the blades cause more injuries than anything. I think they put way more pressure on kness and ankles while twisting and turning and are cut hazards as well. imo worst invention ever. 3. I agree on the diving about and playing with slippers remark. I genuinely think they invite contact and fall about more as players needed eyes in the back of their heads to survive in the olden days. 4. We also had robbo play with ankle issue nearly all year last year and get on with it, so yeah you are probably right, some are weak kneed. If we look at our players, keita just left the field on a stretch with a bang on the leg. henderson or milner or robertson would have got up and ran that off. He has a "bruise" literally. thats what linders told us. A bruise. i dunno. Elliott. Child jumped on by an adult. zero boot protection, dislocated ankle Jones. a tight groin. was travel a factor, did he not warm up right. was he REALLY injured or could he have played in ye olden days? who knows. Jota. similar, was he really injured? we have seen the likes of suarez play wiht a boot two sizes to big to get it over the swollen ankle then be MOTM. Thiago. some sort of calf injury. seems easy to pick up injuries. but then i recall paul stewart (now does talk about mental issues) who could pull a hammy looking at the pitch. Keita. boo boo as discussed. Fabinho. some sort of knee knock. pretty sure he could play through that if he were an 1980s bod. milner pulled a hammy stretching. #old. seriously though if he had the right bloody boots he wouldn't be slipping.
not really. they are insured. one good contract and they should be set for life no matter what. Delle alli and bale are prime examples of stealing a living after a while.
The insurance would only cover them for the duration of that contract right? A players career is relatively short compared to other industries so if they get injured and are unable to play after that contract, that may hurt them financially.
yeah but compared to you and me they are on 100k per week at the top. that 5mil a year and over 5 years is better than winning the lottery. Its set for life stuff. Plus they can then live off the fame after like micah richards (that lad is well sorted, i like him too) or Jermaine jenas (doing very well for himself in bbc land) total sick notes the pair of them. there's hurt and there's hurt. You are tlaking a 25mil loss over a career but they get 25mil for the 5 years anyway so who would really quibble over 25 v 50mil Z wouldn't eh? @Zanjinho
I don't know what you do, but that relatively short career would do me for several lifetimes. I just never understand that argument.
Pansies! There are still players that hardly miss a game through injury. Suarez for example, players such as Carra and Gerrard have talked about how he'd play through the pain barrier because he just wanted to play.
Unless players are breaking metatarsals a la Beckham and Rooney, thinner boots make no difference to the spate of 'injuries' we see nowadays. Muscle pulls are frequent and that could well be because they're in better shape than ever before which make slight tweaks harder to recover from and get back to the 'standard' of play. I think part of it comes from clubs protecting their 'investments' and following medical advice rather than a "get on with it son" approach. Maybe if players got a much higher pay but only for games they were available to play in, we'd see less time on the treatment table... All that said, players are absolutely wimps and pathetic liars like never before: Holding faces like they've been shot, rolling around 5 times after a fair tackle, jumping 3 feet in the air and yelping following a 50/50, jumping backwards with arms flailing when their shirt's been tugged...I sometimes wish the referees would hark back to the 70s and just say, "get on with it, you're fine." Or just insist they spend longer on the sideline getting checked over before coming back on. You know, to give the magic sponge longer do it's trick and make them feel better again. 5minutes should do it! How many managers would berate their little divers if they had a forced 5minute time out for each on-pitch visit from the medics?
Harry kewell comes to mind. Injured consistently til he's nearly out of contract then like lazarus he arises and plays. At 0-3 in CL final he is "injured" but is able to party with the best of them after..... you do question how they are allowed get away with it. I would agree above with players must spend 5mins off or 10mins off if they can't get up. the thing that annoys me most of all is players getting on then lying down again or jumping onto the pitch to roll about to they have to be told to leave. that should be an automatic booking. the preston lad with the pinky yesterday. fans booing us when he hadn't had a heart attack not a head injury. he had to have "attention" then slowly walk off. If he had 10mins off if treatment on the pitch was required you can be damned sure he'd have ran off to get his pinky put in. Its endemic to roll about time wasting in spain esp atletico. the "el classico" is 70mins of rolling about and 10mins football.
I recently read an article about the distance players cover during a match. The top distance is about 13.5 kilometres and the average about 10k. It compared it to distance covered in the 80's (for which there are minimal records but nevertheless enough to make a rough comparison) which had a top distance of 8.1 kilometres and average of 7k. Just from this aspect alone, it's possible to make a correlation between increased physical activity and muscle strain, stress and injury.
When you also consider the diet, the smoking, the pitches and the weight of the ball, it really is amazing more players didn't get prolonged injuries. But as someone said, maybe it was because generally most players weren't as athletic and the speed of the game wasn't as fast, you could get away with it. This is just a logical guess, but anyone who was comparably healthier (I'm thinking Geoff Hurst for example) didn't need to be at the level of players today to outshine others who were less fit. So therefore less was demanded on their bodies to be successful?
Yeah just a bunch of wimps.When I was playing rugby I had to go off injured and limped about after the game and because it was Paddy's night at our club and I was social sec I didn't seek medical help until next day.Turned out I'd broken my fibula in three places,two straight fractures and a compound,now have a plate in my leg. Tarts the lot of them.
Pffff! Coming off because of injury? In my day you couldn't get ON until you had at least 3 fractures, the black lung and radiation poisoning. And that was after walking 20 miles to training, uphill, both ways
Yeah will keep this short And on point They’re wimps our very own Xabi Alonso went off for 2 Weeks with a ****ing dead leg A dead leg - 2 weeks WTAF !!!!!
Yeah at school we had some rugby training that was short lived. One lad was a complete oaf, odd family 4 lads every second one was a short arse and the others were brick **** houses. Mum must have been taking turns with milkman. Anyway the oaf in my year hit a lad first tackle, first session. We all heard the crack. Teacher sent us to get an ice pack and sent the lad home. Turned out hed broken the fibula and dislocated the tibia. He walked home on it l. No more rugby for us.
Bar the dementia, rampant liver failure, lung cancers and that yeah they were clearly harder in those days. But seriously this is like rugby again. In the olden days there be a heap of writhing buggers there for 10.minutes rocking theatres of each other or whatever. Now it's all set up to get the ball out instantly and bash two lads into each other at top speed. Of course concussion must be on the increase. Its probably the same for football. The studs are showing less but the impact force is probably higher. I still think blades are doing for knees and hips though
I won't bore you all with my long list of injuries... Talking of injuries, where's DR nowadays? Not seen him in years!
