Nah that isn’t my theory and I’m not suggesting anything either way. I just always find it funny when in these debates people start throwing around the “sports science” stuff like it’s something concrete. It’s a better idea than is reality and in terms of reducing actual injuries there is clearly no correlation.
I also don’t believe there’s a negligible increase in number of games now to that of late 90’s/00’s that has somehow caused for more injuries.
There used to be two Champions League groups. In England the Fa Cup had replays every round. There was also less subs and less ability to rotate then than there is now. The ball is also out of play a lot more now than it used to be. I’m sure if you took the most minutes played by our players in the 98-99 season you will see more minutes on the clock for that of city’s last season.
People need to start realising footballers are not fitter than they’ve ever been and are actually carrying more injuries than they ever have because all these ‘sports science and fitness programmes they are on are clearly causing issues. It’s the big elephant in the room but nobody seems to want to join the dots. The only significant improvement is that of recovery from injuries. Far less players careers are being affected by ligament tears etc. and that’s actually more down to the general improvement in health and surgery than “sports science”.
Well yeah I guess but that’d be the case in every league throughout history really. 100 points will always win you the title because nobody ever gets it.
Sorry if I seem crass, but when answer a post that actually is about something else, where ‘science’ is one of many things mentioned as things that have gone into improving the level of football, it comes across to me as unnecessary arrogant, uninterested and derisive to answer with ‘Hehe, I was waiting for someone to through about the word ‘sports science’. And then go on a general rant about how stupid ‘everybody’ are. If you are tired of people who are too easily swayed by impressive surfaces, fine, but you don’t need to paint me in that picture to have an excuse to laugh at people. That’s how it comes across to me.
My post was about reasons to think that the level of the best teams in football now are better than they were in the 90’s, not worse (as someone implied). If you find that laughable too, fine, but maybe you could give arguments to why not. I don’t think mine is a ridiculous position, nor that it in itself is evidence that I am necessarily a gullible fool falling for any catch phrase that trends. Neither is the idea that science (or ‘sports science’ if that is a term you prefer) has contributed to higher levels of football, wether in game analysis, optimizing anaerobe or aerobe capacities, patterns of play, nourishment, restitution, effects of alcohol or nikotine or PEDs, I don’t think the idea is ridiculous. Maybe PED’s where more broadly and effectively used in football in the 80’s and 90’s, like in sprint and cycling, but I’m not so sure that goes for football. I think you’d need a lot of evidence to say that either position is laughable just on that aspect alone.
Your point about minutes played is an interesting and good one.I checked a few players just for fun, and found that Denis Irwin played about the same amount of matches from 90-95 as Marcus Rashford did the years Solskjær and others were accused of running him into the ground. Maybe he played more minutes then, probably. I think there are also stats showing that there are more intensive runs per player per game now than back then (can’t dig it up) so maybe there is also a question wether still those minutes might be more taxing now. It’s a fair discussion to have at least, even if it wasn’t the point I was making in the post you answered.