Side B of the wave of injuries that concern all teams days before the 2022 World Cup in Qatar

Ngolo Kante (France), Diogo Jota (Portugal), Paul Pogba (France), Reece James (England), Giovani Lo Celso (Argentina) (AFP)

The list of injured surprises facing the Qatar World Cup 2022. A tournament that will start at an atypical moment of the season in which the main teams of the most important leagues in the world are playing transcendental matches at the end of the first semester of competitions.

The schedule got tight so that everything fits within the scheduled dates, a decision that could be attractive for sports lovers due to the regularity of events but not so for the protagonists, their clubs or their teams, who face each game with the concern of knowing if they will finish the day with the same number of available players with whom they showed up to the meeting.

There is no doubt that the grind of constant confrontations It is the main cause of injuries but not the only one. The players are not robots, and before footballers they are also people with the same sensations and feelings that any human being could have.

the mind part it plays an equally important role as physical for a professional athlete and if it fails it can have great consequences: “Injuries can be multifactorial. As well as physical fatigue, there is also mental fatigue. When one has this type of fatigue, the different mental skills that one has to execute in full competition are impaired”, he details. Infobae Diego McGuire, specialist in sports psychology (NM: 31043).

“Then at some point this causes it to impact the performance of executions that would be different than what I would do without that mental fatigue. Sometimes, injuries can have both a physical and mental factor, as well as emotional,” he explains.

Diogo Jota suffered an injury that left him out of the World Cup (Reuters)
Diogo Jota suffered an injury that left him out of the World Cup (Reuters)

Unfortunately the injury figures continue to rise. In addition to the technical, tactical and even logistical concerns that any coaching staff of a National Team could have for the World Cup, it is added the uncertainty about whether one or more of your figures will arrive on time to join the delegation.

So far there are a handful of names that have been officially removed from the squad (Paul Pogba, Diogo Jota, Reece James, Timo Werner…) but many others, some speeding up the recovery period, They wait between cottons to be able to heal in time.

“Emotional mismanagement, for example anger, can make the player do a certain technical-tactical skill and end up hurting himself. But the origin was poor anger managementas there may be poor management of the emotion of fear, which is an emotion that any athlete can have in a pre-competitive situation. There is the belief that the athlete does not have to be afraid, why not?, more so in a situation like a world championship”, says the Bachelor of Psychology and Coach in sports neurotraining.

At least 15 footballers, between those who are officially out of the World Cup and those who are in doubt, suffered muscle injuries in which, in addition to being caused by the series of matches, the mental part could also have influenced: carry in your head the fear of not getting injured.

“By being afraid, obviously that is going to influence the athlete’s central nervous system and it is going to make his motor system stiffens up more and doesn’t play loose like he should play. Maybe that makes it unable to perform some executions. Perhaps because she is afraid of wanting to take care of herself, she ends up neglecting herself and suffering an injury, ”considers McGuire.

Ángel Di María suffered a muscle injury and put the National Team on alert (AFP)
Ángel Di María suffered a muscle injury and put the National Team on alert (AFP)

“We are so close that any little thing that can happen to you leaves you out. What happened to Paulo, to Video… On a personal level, one worries and seeing these things makes it more ‘scary’, but I think that going out to play thinking about it can be contradictory. It’s best to act normal.As always, play and that is the best way to be well”, he commented Lionel Messi on the subject in a dialogue with DirecTV Sports Recently.

“I think the best way to prevent and be able to reach the world championship is as Messi defines it,” acknowledges the sports psychologist and adds: “It depends on the head of each athlete. But that’s the best thing, because in wanting to take care of myself, in going to play a ball with fear believing that I’m taking care of myself, in reality I’m neglecting myself”.

“In that thinking about going slowly to believe that I am taking care of myself to get to the World Cup, in that believing that I am training lighter believing that I am going to prevent injuries, maybe I just end up getting injured. The best way to prevent injuries is to try to get closer to the real situation of competition”says the professional.

Until now, N’Golo Kanté – The Best Of N’Golo Kanté y Paul Pogba (France), Diogo Jota (Portugal), Reece James (England), Georginio Wijnaldum (Netherlands), Joao Rojas (Ecuador), Sergio Robert (Spain), Timo Werner (Germany), are the soccer players who were officially ruled out of the competition due to the recovery time that their respective injuries will require.

Participation in the World Cup is in doubt for several soccer figures (Reuters)
Participation in the World Cup is in doubt for several soccer figures (Reuters)

The disappointmentthe sadnessthe angerthe frustration. Some in the middle of the game, and others in private, cried when they found out that they were going to stay at the door of the most important soccer tournament in the world.

“What should be done with them is preventive work. What I would ask the player is: ‘Let’s see, this happened, it wasn’t in your hands, it didn’t depend on you, it was something feasible that could happen to any of your colleagues’, and maybe He would work on how to know how to carry that stone that he touched on the road. That he can take charge of what happened and know how to handle it because that will give him resilience and will strengthen him in future competitions”, reflects the Bachelor of Psychology.

“It is a very sad situation. I would particularly work on accepting what happened and in making him understand that the injury simply takes him out of the competition but that his career as an athlete continues. He would focus attention on his next sports goal, or in it at the individual level; that he can continue training different parts of the body, his emotional management, his mental health”, she concludes.

Injuries to elite soccer players grow year after year in the world’s top leagues. A study published by the agency Reuters reflection a 20% increase in cases over last season being the Premier League of England the one that registered the highest number with 1231 cases, followed by the German Bundesliga (1,205) and the Spanish La Liga (848). In turn, they stated that the number of injuries to young soccer players up to 21 years of age multiplied by ten since the last World Cup in Russia 2018.

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