National coach Andries Jonker of the Dutch women’s team was emphatic about this earlier this week, when the NOS asked him in the run-up to the semi-final of the Nations League against Spain on Friday, about the statement against overload that the internationals will soon issue: “This this won’t work any longer.”
Last week, Jonker announced that the Dutch football players will soon do “something”. But the coach – who previously (in vain) suggested to his players to skip the Olympic Games out of concern for their resilience and disturbed work-rest ratio – did not want to say what that is. It is certain that Nigel de Jong, director of top football at the KNVB, had discussions this week about overload with UEFA and FIFA officials and representatives of other European football associations. It cannot be ruled out that European teams will issue a joint statement.
Last year, more and more attention was paid to the full playing calendar. The problems started during the corona pandemic, which caused a one-year postponement of the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020. The postponed European Championships were played the following year, and the World Cup was in 2023. This year the Games will be held in Paris and next year there will be another European Championship. For example, there are players who do not get any rest for five summers in a row.
These major tournaments are separate from the Champions League and the Nations League. “You have to do it with five days off during the winter break and two weeks off in the summer, before the new season is around the corner,” said striker Lieke Martens in 2022, in response to the serious cruciate ligament injury of her Spanish colleague Alexia Putellas. “You’re free one day a week, if you’re lucky. We travel a lot, play two matches a week, train every day. You just go on and on and always have to perform.”
The full playing calendar is increasingly associated with the long list of top players who were or are sidelined due to a torn anterior cruciate ligament: in addition to Putellas, also Vivianne Miedema, Beth Mead, Sam Kerr, Marie-Antoinette Katoto and, more recently Jill Roord and Aniek Nouwen. “In the past, high workload was mainly a problem in men’s football, but in recent years also increasingly in women’s football,” says Professor Dr. Vincent Gouttebarge, head of the medical team of the international players’ union Fifpro and scientist at Amsterdam UMC.
Gouttebarge recently submitted an article to a scientific journal that makes an “association” between overload and cruciate ligament injuries. According to him, you cannot speak of a causal relationship, the factors that lead to injuries are too diverse for that. But through player workload monitoringwhere workload, rest days and travel of players are tracked by Fifpro, it can be established that players who sustained an anterior cruciate ligament injury have a significantly higher workload than non-injured players.
More and more demands
A UEFA study was also published this year in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which tracked the experiences of around six hundred players from fifteen top European teams between 2018 and 2022. 463 of them reported a combined 1,527 injuries. Conclusion: a professional women’s team can count on about 35 ‘time-loss injuries’ per season. Thigh muscle injuries are the most common, but the impact of injuries to the anterior cruciate ligament is by far the greatest.
What is certain is that more and more demands are being placed on the excellers in a rapidly growing sport. That demands something from a body, which must be well prepared for it, said Edwin Goedhart, sports medicine manager of the KNVB, recently in Fidelity. Women lag behind their male colleagues when it comes to training loads and physical endurance, he said. “Talented boys often play sports in youth training five or six times a week, including strength training. This is becoming increasingly better organized for the girls, but there is still a gap. You can learn coordination and control of the muscles well in your youth and you can benefit from this later, because these are factors that play a role in cruciate ligament injuries.”
“Men’s teams often have a staff from here to Tokyo, good facilities and well-trained coaches,” says Gouttebarge. “This can be done much better with women.” For this reason, he says, the British Leeds Beckett University has recruited a Canadian postdoc who will conduct research with all professional English women’s teams for three years. How effective are the existing measures to reduce cruciate ligament injuries? What effect do workload, recovery time and travel have? More knowledge and good guidance, that’s what Gouttebarge is all about.
“If you have fear [voor een kruisbandblessure] plays, you are not yourself,” midfielder Damaris Egurrola said earlier this week via video link from the training camp in Marbella. Players should be better protected, she thought. Vivianne Miedema mentioned the full playing calendar in her A.Dcolumn once “a shame”. She enjoys football very much, she wrote, and feels like a privileged person. “But that doesn’t mean we should ignore our health.”
People sometimes forget that footballers are employees, says Tim Wilms, sports and employment law lawyer, with the associated labor laws, including, in the Netherlands, occupational health and safety legislation. This means that clubs as employers have an obligation to ensure a good and safe working environment for their players. But they must also have policies to limit psychosocial work burden – such as excessive work pressure. “If clubs do not do this sufficiently, they could be held liable if players become ill or injured as a result.”
For the time being, as far as the Dutch internationals are concerned, it remains a statement against overload. And even that is sensitive, says an insider. According to him, there is also a fear that they will be dismissed as defective football players. Like whiny stockings. “It would be better to make concrete demands for better guidance or a different organization of the competitions,” he says. Everyone understands the message, but that’s what it’s all about how you bring.”