Just days before the World Cup starts and Rio Ferdinand, Manchester United and England captain, has been ruled out of the competition after sustaining a knee ligament injury during training.
Many people may put this down to bad luck. Ferdinand’s injuries are alternately cited as the result of poor attention to prior injuries, and the outcome of a long and unwelcome injury jinx in which players are hurt directly before finals.
I don’t hold with these black magic theories and prefer to believe that the reason that so many players on the brink of wearing the England home jersey is down to one thing and one thing alone, the sheer intensity and the volume of matches that the top English (and those from other countries playing in the Premier League) are forced to play in an average season.
If you are playing for a top side, who have qualified for Europe, then you can expect to participating in four competitions each season. The Premier League, The Champions League or Europa Cup, The FA Cup and the Carling Cup. This list doesn’t include any of the pre- and post-season games that occur in a season, or the number of pre-season friendlies in which a team can participate.
Then there is the speed and intensity of the game in England. Whereas on the continent the game is often played in a more stop/start fashion, in England it is often full blood from the first whistle and played at a speed and pace which makes injuries inevitable. A number of top players are known to engage in between forty and fifty difficult games in a single season, plus training.
The workload is immense and the toll comes on the player’s body. Injuries are unavoidable with this kind of consistent strain.
Look at England’s current squad. We’ve already had to lament the loss of Rio Ferdinand, Bobby Zamora, Owen Hargreaves, and Michael Owen from the World Cup tournament, a very sad fact, considering that they are all great players. Capello eliminated Theo Wolcott After his game performance suffered due to an injured shoulder that he sustained in 2008 match against Stroke.
The players on the team that are fit, didn’t get that way easily Ledley King needs specialist training to keep his knees in prime condition. Other recovering athletes with injuries this season include Steven Gerard, and Joe Cole, Ashley Cole, Aaron Lennon, Glen Johnson, Wayne Rooney and David James. People like Gareth Barry will be missing the first game of the World Cup finals against the United States. Soccer hero David Beckham finally had to call it quits after an Achilles injury pushed him out of the playing squad for the finals.
It’s an odd quirk of fate that our love of the game in England, our thirst and desire for big games at a quicker pace, more often, is seemingly at odds with the ability to produce that which almost all England fans craves more than anything else: A second World Cup winning team.
