With the 2022 World Cup kicking off this week over in Qatar, it seemed an ideal moment to shed a bit of light on some of the most common injuries a good chunk of footballers representing their countries over the next month will be at risk of sustaining. Football is (subjectively, of course) a beautiful sport, and largely considered to be the world’s ‘beautiful game’, but just like any sport that includes running, twisting and turning, and sudden changes in direction, the risk of acute injuries is, understandably, quite high.
Whether it’s a sudden muscle cramp or a pulled hamstring, there are quite a handful of injuries that players could potentially suffer from in football’s most prestigious event this winter. Let’s take a look then at some of the main ones here below!
Concussion
Whether it’s goal kicks from the goalkeeper (or some defenders in some instances), long throw-ins, free kicks, or corner kicks, modern-day football involves significant amounts of long passes, crosses, and clearances, where the ball will be travelling in the air for a significant amount of time. Inevitably, this encourages aerial duels between opposing players.
With elbows flying, and both heads jumping for the same ball, both players put themselves at risk of sustaining concussion, which is a mildly traumatic injury to the brain. Although mild, football players who suffer from concussion could suffer from serious (albeit largely temporary) medical complications, such as a loss of consciousness that can last as long as 30 minutes.
As outlined by Top Doctors member and highly esteemed consultant neurologist, Dr Ioannis Mavroudis, in an article he shared on concussion last month, concussion can take up to six months to fully heal, and, in some severe cases, more than two years. It is certainly something all footballers should be aware of whilst participating at the World Cup. It is, of course, much easier said than done though when you are representing your country at such a renowned sporting event worldwide, where emotions, understandably, are going to win the battle against caution and rationality.
Groin pull/strain
This is quite a common one in football, and if you are a regular viewer of the sport, you’ll have seen a fair share of footballers pull up holding the inner muscles of the thigh. Why does this happen though? Well, groin pulls or groin strains occur as a direct result of sudden movement, such as kicking, running, jumping, or twisting quickly and suddenly to change direction.
What factors influence these kinds of injuries, though? Dr David Porter, a distinguished and renowned London-based senior football and sports medicine physician, recently shared some insight with us at Top Doctors with regards to the main causes of these types of common pulls and strains in of one his informative Top Doctors articles, highlighting fatigue and poor muscle conditioning as the two main reasons behind the occurrence of them.
Hamstring pull/strain and hamstring tear
Hamstring injuries are, today, the single most common injuries in the footballing world. Just like groin pulls or strains, hamstring pulls/strains or tears can occur as a result of changing direction suddenly, although the most common cause of this injury is powerful and intense acceleration and deacceleration. Hamstring pulls or strains, which are less serious than hamstring tears, typically occur when a footballer overstrides, or when they do not stretch their hamstring correctly before a football match, or when they do not stretch their hamstring at all.
Hamstring tears are more painful, and tend to take longer to recover from. Either a partial or complete hamstring muscle tear can occur in professional footballers, with the principal causes being, as mentioned, sprinting, lunging, or jumping.
All of these activities overstretch the hamstring tendon and muscle. Thus, ensuring proper stretching exercises in both the warm-up and warm-down before and after football matches is essential when it comes to avoiding hamstring pulls or tears. Depending on the severity of the hamstring injury, recovery time can take as long as a couple of months.
One of the most high-profile football players to fall victim to a career-disrupting hamstring injury in the last few years was Barcelona’s dazzling winger Ousmane Dembele. The Frenchman suffered a torn hamstring on his full debut for Barcelona in a 2-1 win against Getafe in LaLiga back in September 2017, an injury which would keep him ruled out of action for four months.
ACL and PCL injuries
Undoubtedly the most severe of footballing injuries mentioned thus far in the blog post, we simply can’t avoid mentioning ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) or PCL (posterior cruciate ligament) injuries when talking about the most common injuries in football. These injuries can occur to a player’s knee ligaments in two main scenarios:
- If he or she receive a direct blow to the knee.
- If the player makes a sudden turn or change in direction while running at a high speed.
As explained in one of distinguished orthopaedic surgeon Mr Arjuna Imbuldeniya’s articles for Top Doctors, “ACL injuries usually occur as a result of twisting or pivoting injuries to the knee, such as stopping and changing direction quickly whilst running or jumping.” Mr Imbuldeniya also revealed in this informative article that although sportsmen and sportswomen can partially tear or indeed sprain their ACL, complete ACL tears are the most common of the three.
One of the most documented ACL injuries to occur in the last decade of English football was that of Arsenal legend Robert Pires. The French winger was side-lined for six months towards the end of the 2001/2002 football season, missing out on the 2002 World Cup completely as a result. Arsenal fans at the time will remember how that injury changed the way Pires played the game from then onwards: from the way he ran, to the way he dribbled, it was clear that the winger’s knee was never going to quite be the same.
It looked stiff once he had eventually returned, but, thankfully for Arsenal fans, and football lovers in general at that time, Pires was able to adapt his game and style, sacrificing his running and dribbling with the ball with a more clever and balanced approach to wing-play. More recently, Liverpool’s Dutch centre back, Virgil Van Dijk, ruptured his ACL in the Merseyside derby against Everton back in 2020. He was out for nine months, and underwent ACL reconstruction surgery.
What about injuries to the posterior cruciate ligament, then? Simply put, they occur as a result of heavy and direct force from the front to the back of the knee, and most commonly happen when footballers are already falling to the ground while their knee is in a bent position.
Muscle cramps
Footballer or not, we’ve all been there. After a long, tiresome day where we’ve overexerted ourselves without properly taking necessary breaks nor eating and drinking enough, our body simply yells out in agony. Usually occurring in our big toe, muscle cramps can occur anywhere in the body.
They can be so debilitating, that footballers (and non-footballers, too, of course) will be physically unable to move the affected body part until the cramp has been rid of. They mainly affect sports athletes during high-intensity and long-lasting sporting activities, and can be quite the common occurrence in extra time of football matches. Expect to see quite a lot of footballers at the Qatar World Cup pull up with cramp, particularly leg cramp, where they will have to wait to be ushered to by teammates to help stretch it out and get rid of it.
Ankle sprains
Ankle sprains are extremely common in football. You’ll often see a horrific sliding tackle on a television slowed-down replay that shows an opposition player slide and crash into the player in question’s ankle. Obviously a terribly painful injury, and one that can keep a player on the side lines for quite some time.
Depending on the playing surface, some football players can nastily get their ankle caught in the grass, as their boot studs dig deep into the (mainly when it happens) uneven pitch. This can result in an excruciating twisted or sprained ankle. Let’s hope for all the players’ sake that the playing surfaces in Qatar are up to standard!
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