For Arsenal it was a gruelling yet sadly familiar sight. A key player in obvious pain, his hand clutching the back of his leg. The hamstring muscles of the Arsenal first-team have presented problem after problem for Mikel Arteta this season, and on Tuesday night there was another one: Gabriel Magalhaes limped off the pitch after 16 minutes against Fulham.
It is too early to know the severity of Gabriel’s issue but it certainly looked to be a bad one. The Brazilian is not the type to go down easily, and he hobbled off the field with a look of real anguish on his face. He is now a serious doubt for Arsenal’s Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid, if not for the remainder of the campaign.
Gabriel is the fourth key player to suffer a hamstring injury at Arsenal this season. Bukayo Saka missed 101 days with the hamstring tear he suffered in December, while Kai Havertz suffered a season-ending hamstring injury in February. Gabriel Martinelli was out for more than a month with a hamstring issue of his own, also sustained in February.
What is going on here? Well, the first thing to make clear is that Arsenal are far from alone in suffering from the curse of the hamstring. It is not an Arsenal-specific problem, but a football-wide issue that is causing significant concern in medical departments across the Premier League and beyond.
At these clubs the greatest worry is not the actual number of hamstring injuries, but the severity of them. Elite footballers are not necessarily suffering more hamstring injuries, but the hamstring injuries they are suffering are generally more serious than before.
Data from Premier Injuries shows that, in the Premier League this season, there have been 118 hamstring-related injuries (they represent more than a quarter of all injuries in the division). Of those 118 injuries, 71 of them (60 per cent) have been severe enough to keep the player out of action for a month or more.
From the start of the 2019-20 season to the end of the 2022-23 campaign, by contrast, only 40 per cent of hamstring injuries kept a player out for such a long period of time.
There are examples across the division this season. Chelsea’s Nicolas Jackson and Noni Madueke have been out since February with hamstring issues. Tottenham Hotspur’s Micky van de Ven, Wilson Odobert, Ben Davies, Timo Werner, Richarlison and Destiny Udogie have all had hamstring problems.
Other examples include Manchester United’s Mason Mount, Everton’s Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Brighton’s Igor Julio, Liverpool’s Joe Gomez and Fulham’s Reiss Nelson.
Within the industry there is no single, accepted reason for this alarming shift. If the medical staff knew the exact cause, it would be easier to find a solution. There are, however, some obvious factors that are contributing to the grisly situation.
Relentless schedule
The first of those is the schedule. The ever-increasing number of matches is a source of enormous concern within dressing rooms. Many players, coaches and medical experts fear that players are effectively paying the price for the cumulative load that has been placed on their bodies over recent seasons.
At Arsenal, for example, Arteta has said it is sadly “inevitable” that the players who have played the most football will suffer from injuries. Saka had played almost 150 matches since the summer of 2022 before his hamstring tear in December. Havertz had gone beyond 160 appearances since the summer of 2022 before his injury in February, while Gabriel has played more than 150 in that same time.
Speaking in February, Arteta said: “Obviously some of them we know are based on loads and minutes. It’s inevitable. We have players that have been injured that have played 130 games in the last two seasons. So at the end, it’s an accident waiting to happen if you continue to load and load and load.”
The major problem with the relentless schedule, in which big clubs routinely play at weekends and then again in midweek, is that players do not have time to train and strengthen their muscles in the gym. In those busiest periods of the season, footballers are either playing matches or recovering from matches. There is no in-between.
Arteta said that Arsenal have trained “less than ever” this season. “There is no time for training,” he said earlier in the campaign. “The biggest problem is that you don’t train the muscle. So the muscle is under-trained and then you expose the muscle and the tendon to an exposure that they cannot absorb, because the tendon needs 72 hours to recover.
“When you have to load that muscle for two, three, six, eight weeks, and you have not trained it, the risk of injury is much bigger. Because the muscle of the tendon is not recovered and then it’s not prepared to absorb the load and the stress that you’re going to put it under again every three days.”
Ever-increasing speed of the game
A secondary issue is that the speed of the game is increasing with each season. In the Premier League, the majority of teams now look to employ a high-intensity, high-pressing tactical system. For attackers, this involves repeated accelerations and decelerations out of possession, rather than sitting deeper in a more defensive shape. For defenders, it means leaving large spaces behind the defence and then sprinting back when the ball goes over their heads.
These sprints all place huge demands on the hamstring. Indeed, it was during a full-speed sprint back towards his own goal against Fulham that Gabriel suffered his injury on Tuesday night.
The issue of long-distance travel cannot be ignored, either. Fifpro, the global footballers’ union, says international travel and acclimatisation to different time zones makes recovery more challenging and increases a player’s risk of injury.
Is it a coincidence, therefore, that Gabriel suffered his injury on his first match for Arsenal since representing Brazil in last month’s international break? The centre-back played against Colombia on March 21 but was suspended for Brazil’s second match. With Arsenal’s players on an extended break, he remained in the country to support his favourite club, Corinthians, in the stands as they won the Brazilian title on Thursday.
What is the solution? One argument is that managers should rotate their squads more often. Saka, Havertz and Gabriel, after all, have played so many matches because Arteta has picked them in so many matches. It is, though, a hard argument for a medical department to make to a manager whose job depends on results. It can also be a hard argument to make to players, most of whom want to play as often as possible.
Most coaches and players would agree that the schedule needs addressing. There have been complaints for many seasons now, with Manchester City midfielder Rodri recently warning of a potential strike. But England captain Harry Kane summarised it neatly when he said last month that players are not “listened to” over scheduling concerns.
Bigger squads could help, but some clubs would argue that the investment required for that would not be feasible under current financial restrictions. And how does all this tally with the desire of broadcasters, organisations, leagues and clubs to maintain, if not improve, the quality and excitement of the product?
At present, there appears to be little sign of any significant change in the near future. If anything the potential factors behind the hamstring curse are being exacerbated, rather than addressed. The players will simply continue to pay the price, with Gabriel being just the latest of many.
