Aadi's Sports Corner

As everyone says, injuries are a part of football. Not just football, but sports in general. But the number of unnecessary injuries has doomed the beautiful sport over the past year and continues to project its negative impact. 

As spoken earlier, the increased number of games since last season has severely affected the physical condition of players. A number of players have fallen prey to the long season and have had to deal with nearly career ending injuries. 

The player whose injury has been a topic across Europe and led to a media feud between managers, is that of Lamine Yamal. The Spanish star has accomplished feats at the mere age of 18 that’s still a dream for many pros. The young winger had an extremely long season as he won the domestic treble with Barcelona and reached the UCL semi-finals. 

With the new season starting, the fatigue loomed over the player since the enthralling season he had despite enjoying a month long break. The new season demanded commitment and hard work throughout. Despite a rocky start to the season, Yamal was called up for Spain for the World Cup qualifiers against Bulgaria and Turkey. 

Although he provided brilliant performances in both games, the real drama was to unfold. On his return to club football after the international break, it was noticed by FC Barcelona’s medical staff, that Yamal had injured his pubic area due to activities off the field. It was later revealed that Yamal had injured himself a while back and was in severe pain while playing against Turkey. Spanish manager Luis De La Fuente, infiltrated Yamal with painkillers and played him for 78 minutes against Turkey even when the team was winning by a huge margin. 

Barcelona manager Hansi Flick criticised Fuente’s tactics. The former Germany manager was quoted, “Spain gave Lamine painkillers and even when they were winning they made him play… and this is NOT taking care of the players. I’m very sad about this.”

In response De La Fuente hit back by saying that injuries are a part of football and that there is always a risk factor involved in sports. He directed his words to Hansi Flick by saying, “I was simply surprised by those statements because he was a national team coach, and I believed he had that empathy.” He added, “Likewise, I say that he was a coach and knows how we players behave. That’s what surprises me, that a former coach would have that opinion. We’re playing for the World Cup, that’s what’s really important. The rest isn’t important.”

After being sidelined for nearly 2 weeks, Yamal made his return in a league match against Real Sociedad at home. He featured in the PSG match mid-week and was named in Spain’s squad for the upcoming international break, despite having recovered and attempting to reach full fitness. A few hours after the announcement, Barcelona informed that Lamine’s injury had relapsed and that he would be out for 2-3 weeks. 

This injury concern comes out as a strong tactic used by the club, in order to prevent the winger from playing for his national team and getting further injured. A large section of the media believes that this is a “fake injury” wherein the player is not injured, but in order to prevent a serious injury and manage the players game time, a fake scenario is created. 

Players like Kylian Mbappe, Marcus Rashford and Harry Kane, all have suffered injuries right before the international break commences. Clubs have realised that international breaks increase the workload of players which majorly affects their fitness and recovery time. 

Many might think if there’s any say of the clubs and players in such cases. The answer is yes. Football clubs possess the right to restrict their players from playing certain national team matches. The reason being, football clubs pay a large amount of a player’s salary and have a certain set of deals that give them the outright control over the players career. 

If in a certain case a player gets injured on national duty, receive financial compensation through FIFA’s Club Protection Programme (CPP) for the loss of earnings and time associated with a player’s injury. This insurance scheme provides cover for serious injuries caused by accidents during training, matches, or travel related to national team duties, with compensation calculated based on the player’s salary and capped at €7.5 million per player.

Would we see tons of such acts by clubs in the coming months with the World Cup on the horizon would be something to watch out for.