Jamie Carragher has leapt to the defence of Virgil van Dijk following the Liverpool captain’s recent protestations over the workload of elite footballers in the modern era.
The Dutchman recently spoke out about the number of games which are forced upon players at the highest level, calling for his peers to ‘contribute to a solution’ to a freer calendar (The Mirror).
The 32-year-old was duly criticised by Alan Shearer over those comments, but one of his predecessors as the lynchpin of the Reds’ backline wheeled out a statistic which more than vindicates the Netherlands centre-back’s grievance.
In his column for The Telegraph on Friday, Carragher wrote: “A report last year by the global footballers’ union, FIFpro, revealed that no player at the 2022 World Cup played more football than Van Dijk heading into the tournament.
“Between July 2021 and October 24, 2022, Van Dijk played 78 games for club and country, totalling 7,597 minutes. Immediately after returning from Qatar he pulled his hamstring.”
The 45-year-old added: “I applaud Van Dijk for saying this. I am baffled that anyone disagrees. The expanding workload for top-class internationals is ridiculous and relentless, with expanding international competitions like the UEFA Nations League and a revamped FIFA Club World Cup on the horizon.
“Those saying congestion is eased by a ‘bigger squad’, or justified because of the high footballers’ wages, are talking nonsense.”
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Carragher is right in everything that he says, with the astounding stat about Van Dijk’s game-time in that 15-month period prior to last year’s World Cup the perfect illustration of the demands which are placed on footballers at the highest level.
As the ex-Liverpool defender also pointed out, the Dutchman was only coming back from a Jordan Pickford-enforced nine-month injury layoff at the start of that unrelenting timeframe.
Furthermore, playing so much football doesn’t just take a physical toll. It must also be mentally draining to continue performing to such lofty standards with minimal time for recovery in between matches.
That’s even more pertinent for a centre-back like Van Dijk, who knows that the merest drop in concentration could result in the concession of a goal within a second, whereas strikers would have greater leeway for similar lapses considering where they’re stationed on the pitch.
Like Carragher pointed out, the expansion and creation of tournaments serves only to further intensify the workload on modern-day footballers, with FIFA and their ilk chasing the almighty dollar at the expense of the welfare of their most important assets – the players themselves.
What will it take for the authorities to realise they’re flogging the sport’s biggest stars to an unsustainable degree? Sadly, it’ll probably be a career-ending injury or a genuine health scare.
#Ep94 of The Empire of the Kop Podcast: EOTK Insider with Neil Jones🎙️