5 Steps to Stop the Injury Crisis.

Well, stopping it might be a stretch. But there is a lot that we can do to improve it.

Jun 11, 2025

Welcome back to Football Latest, and this week, we discuss the injury crisis that seems to have been going on for 2 years straight. Serious injuries for masses of key players struck many Premier League clubs at the start of the 2023/24 season, and to deal with this pressing issue, changes were made. Changes to scrap the winter break, expand the Champions League and turn the Club World Cup into a massive tournament. Safe to say, these changes have not helped and will continue to worsen the problem. In 2023/24, Chelsea, Newcastle and Manchester United were some of the main teams effected, and this season, Bournemouth, Newcastle, Tottenham, Brighton and Manchester City have all had serious injury troubles.

These teams mentioned are only some of the main examples; almost every team has been impacted, especially those in and around Europe. So how can this be solved? It needs drastic action, and as much as some people like to ignore this issue for its lack of generating interesting stories about “failing teams”, it needs to be addressed. So here are 5 potential solutions.

Scrap the Nations League

I hope that everyone can agree on this. We have the World Cup. We have the Euros. We have World Cup Qualifiers. We have Euro Qualifiers. We have international friendlies. Nobody cares about the Nations League. If it disappeared tomorrow, most people wouldn't care, and a decent proportion of football fans wouldn't notice. The only difference would be that the elite players would get more rest rather than playing in a competition as obsolete as the Nations League. Not only this, but the Nations League can also be quite confusing with its promotion-relegation groups system. And the more matches we have between top teams like Portugal and Spain, the less each of these matches matters to fans.

Pre-Season Club Friendlies - Academy Players, Reserves and New Signings Only

This could be a more drastic change, but I think it would have some real positives. The main positive from this is, of course, the fact that, especially when there are summer international tournaments, top players need more of an international break. For their bodies to play high intensity physical activity every 3-4 days from August to May-June, and then to play international tournaments every other year, going quickly back to club football with friendlies is not good for players who play week-in, week-out. Not only do players get more of a rest during the summer, but by prioritising game time for new signings, reserves and academy players, the manager can get a better idea of if academy players are ready for some professional action, the quality of the reserve players of the team, and the quality of new signings. Of course, if a club does not have an academy strong enough to facilitate this, then they will have to use first team players, but at the European level, where injuries have become the biggest concern, most teams should be able to facilitate a system like this.

Scrap the Club World Cup

It’s another of the more drastic suggestions, but the expansion of the Club World Cup is going to be disastrous for player injuries if teams take it seriously. Without the Club World Cup, teams play a major summer tournament in alternating years, however, with the expanded Club World Cup, players only get a break from a major summer tournament every 4 years, playing the Euros one year, followed by the Club World Cup the next, followed by the World Cup. Then they get a year off a Summer tournament, and the cycle repeats. We really don’t need another competition, this is just yet another scheme to get football more international attention, and thus, more money generated for FIFA.

Rework international qualifiers

This is quite an interesting solution that I feel could massively help players get more rest in the middle of the season during periods where they get little to no time away from high-intensity football action. The majority of teams who would benefit from more rest time from football would be those competing in Europe, and many of these player play at international level for some of the top nations in the world. This rework would mean that nations that reach the knockouts of the Euros, AFCON, Copa America or the World Cup automatically qualify for the next edition of that specific tournament, not needing to play qualifiers. While the main pushback to this initially would be that it could have a negative impact on smaller nations, I would argue the opposite. This change could make it harder for smaller teams to be put in impossible qualification groups (“groups of death”, as they are known), as the teams that make these groups almost impossible for smaller nations will mostly all have already qualified for the tournament by reaching the knockouts of the previous tournament. This could help to level the playing field for smaller teams across all qualification groups, making qualification fairer for these smaller nations.

Bring Back the Winter Break

This final change is one that I am sure everyone can agree on. The scrapping of the Winter Break was a ridiculous decision to make way for more fixtures in the summer, disguised as “giving players more summer rest”. I am not convinced that this was the reason for this change, but rather, it was to make way for the Club World Cup and, potentially, more pre-season fixtures. A winter break allows teams who get very little break all year round to finally give their players some rest during the season, and this change, as well as all of the others listed, would surely help to stop this injury crisis that has been ongoing since the start of the 2023/24 season. Thanks for reading as usual, make sure to comment your opinion on any of these changes, and see you next week for more.