Rio Ferdinand, captain of both Manchester United and England, is devastated after, just days prior to the beginning of the World Cup, he has been ruled out as a competitor due to an injury to his knee ligaments that the player suffered during training.
A number of people are superstitious about the reasons for the injury, chalking it up to bad luck. Some may point to Ferdinand’s injury hit season being proof that something like this was almost inevitable for the United star, others have been quick to state that it is the old “injury jinx” striking again just before a major finals event.
Personally, I would like to think that the reason for a rapid loss of players in England’s soccer uniform when it comes time to compete is more related to the intensity of the numerous games that England and other players in the Premier League face.
Playing for a top side also means taking part in four competitions a season. Among these are The Premier League, The FA Cup, The Champions League or Europa Cup, The Carling Cup and The FA 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.
In addition to the number of games England plays, the speed and intensity of an average match is high. 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.
Players suffer under the weight of constant physical stress. With so much time spent playing, it should be more surprising when a player doesn’t get injured.
Consider England’s present line-up. Rio Ferdinand, Bobby Zamora, Owen Hargreaves, and Michael Owen all suffered injuries this year, leaving the squad, which originally had 30 men insanely short staffed. Theo Walcott was omitted, by Capello, due to the fact Capello feels he hasn’t been the same player since he injured a shoulder against Stoke in 2008.
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. England’s most capped player, David Beckham sustained in Achilles injury several months ago, which ruled him out as a player in the World Cup 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.
