Elite footballers face ever-increasing physical and mental demands, with a faster-paced game and long, gruelling seasons. In a World Cup year, how does a player make it to June fit and fired up? “They (clubs) want their players at 100 percent until the last game, and it doesn’t matter if there’s a World Cup afterwards.”What to do? But it is a tough balance, and sometimes things go wrong in the lead-up to a World Cup. Another study counted 104 injuries at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, an average of 1.68 per match.

Source: Punch June 04, 2018 12:45 UTC