Education Footballers: Fit athlete's or big girls blouses?

Watching a report on the Newcastle - Liverpool match which I assume was played yesterday evening where Liverpool won 2-0 I was rather taken aback when the Liverpool manager commented on what he thought was poore ball control in the sec half. And the excuse he gave that there might had been some tiredness from a previous mid week game.

Is this possible? I thought footballers were very fit yet it serms they can only fit enough for one 90+ minutes performance once a week. This cannot be right surely as the World cup finals would need to be spread over a year.

Or is it just another excuse from a manager to explain away a poor work ethic from his team? I am not a football fan so I may well have missed such a comment. But I do not think I have ever heard a manager call his team a bunch of lazy so and so's after a poor performance even when it is blatantly obvious that this was the case.

 

Both, usually.

 

Footballers are a joke, they wouldn't last a week in motorcycle racing.
British MotoGP rider Cal Crutchlow breaks and dislocated his ankle in practice and raced 24 hours later, this is not that uncommon in m/cycle racing and it's not just physical injuries, Robert Dunlop died in a bike crash while practising at the North West 200 race, Michael Dunlop, his youngest son, went out and raced at the same circuit thirty-six hours later and won the race for his father and he didn't need £100,000 a week to do it either.



and then there is the ultimate m/cycle racing challenge, The TT Races, Isle of Man, those riders are a true breed all of their own, footballers better not watch as it's for real men and women.

 

In the interests of balance, allow me to point out that there is no absolute single value for the amount of effort spent during a football match.

E.g. the amount of effort spent by a team of Premiership footballers when playing against another Premiership team is likely to be greater than if they were playing against 11 x Kronos. They could probably play 5 matches in one day against 11 x Kronos without much worry.

Also bear in mind that the exertion is not just running. A massive amount of the total fatigue a player experiences is due to the stop/start/turning/jumping nature of the game.

Plus there's the mental side of things. The self-motivation/discipline and concentration required to play against 11 x Kronos is arguably going to be less than that required against another team of similar standard competing for millions of pounds in rewards.

Same argument applies across sport. Is Mo Farah fit? Does he run 7 marathons in 7 days, all at the same level of maximum performance?

Sitting on a bike? Not quite the same issue, but I'll gladly donate some tissues for you to take with you to your next bike meet.

 

You clearly have have absolutely no idea the amount of physical effort needed to race a m/cycle at 200mph, the G-force is trying to throw you over the bars when you brake and rip you off the back of the bike when accelerating, your comment is typical, you think the bike does all the work and the rider just sits there, the arms get pumped because they have to sustain the G- force of body weight when braking and legs have to absorb all the shocks as the bike leaps around, bike racers have to be really fit.

Typical ant-bike comment, if a bike racer needed some tissue for an injury he wouldn't need months of rehab and pampering before he raced again, stick to watching blokes in shorts kick a ball around that sounds like more than enough excitement for you!

 

Horses for courses athletes of all forms have to train and will experience fatique either physical or mental from over doing things.
Some sports require them to be more fit than others. Darts is a sport but most players are not the epitone of physical fitness, where as a marathon runner has to be. Both though are athletes in their chosen sport.

Footballers require good all over fitness to play at the levels required. A TT rider while needing to keep trim is more focused on upper and core strength.

 

I will say overall I do believe most footballers to be very fit athletes. Now i have not played football to the standard they have before, But im sure that in a game the players give it as much as the possibly can, and that will most likely will leave them very worn out.

Now everyone sees and has seen how they seem to bruise like a ripe bannana and treat every tackle like it could have killed them, But that more than anything seems to be playing to the referee to win a foul and get the other player punished for it. Normally you see players get up pretty soon after they know the outcome of the situation.

You do get some pretty serious injuries in football and likening that to the bike comments above i will also point out a few years ago when Rossi destroyed his ankles but was back in about 6 weeks but still racing on crutches. I think the main difference in the 2 sports is the way they use their bodies to do everything. Cals injury while serious was a dislocation in theory that could be 'popped' back into place with pain killers and a local pain killer injection before the race along with some anti-inflamation injections and he should in theory depending on which foot be able to break or change gear. I just dont see how a footballer could play with the same injuries.

I do think that overall there does seem to be a media image overall that conforms to the stereotype that footballers are overpriced girls who would be out for 4 weeks thanks to a stiff blow of wind, But I think due to the way the game is and just how much effort they put in and the fact there are huge teams of physios and doctors involved at the clubs there slots of people who have to declare the player fit to play.

I will say I am a huge fan of bike racing and I am quite the fan of football and many other sports, If you want to argue about the merits of different sports this might not be the tread for it. I will say though If you do think top end bike racing isn't that hard you are wrong, the top riders are in amazing physical condition same as most top end athletes in most sports

 

Calm down, dear. You're quick to jump to conclusions today. Biking with a broken ankle is not the same as running, jumping, twisting & turning with a broken ankle. I'd like to have seen your superhero fap-magnet rider playing a game of football after incurring the ankle injury. Different issue.

 

The answer to your question, is that it’s the end of the season, so first team players (starting 11) will have played at minimum 1, but often 2 games per week, every week since August. There are breaks, but often these are for international friendlies, or qualifiers, so a number of your team will be playing in those too.

 

Plus there was a World Cup in 2014, so many players missed out on their normal summer break.

 

So you are saying that these well paid and supposedly fit individuals have trouble playing two games of football a week for the season? Most odd.

 

I think if you include the training every day they do and the other things they will no doubt do to stay in top physical shape for what they do simply saying they played 2 games of football a week isnt easy.

its 180 mins of full commitment football games on top of how ever long they spend in training each week im guessing 3 days but i have no clue, any other physical training they do outside or training, Traveling and the like it can be quite exhausting. It can easily add up if they have a particularly hard game on say Saturday then play again Wednesday. they will most likely have 2 possibly 3 full days of training before that, and towards the end of the season where they have been playing quite a lot of football (esp for the footballers in international squads) the speed at which they can recover and be at peak fitness for the next game will not be as high as it was.,

 

@Kronos #11 - Sort of, and if you go back and read the rest of the thread you'll understand why

Given the amount of money these guys are paid, if it was that easy to perform without ever getting tired, why aren't other people stepping in and showing these softies up? Let's get that double-ard biker in with his broken ankle for a game or two and see how he copes.

Come back to us when you've played 50+ x 100 minutes of Premiership/international/european football.

 

I'd say in comparison to other international sport professionals they fall fairly low on the fitness levels. Purely on physical aspect (removing the comparison of skill) there are plenty of sports that trump footballers on pure fitness.

Waterpolo
Any form of motorsport
Iceskating
Swimming
Rugby
Cycling
Triathlon

That's just a list off the top of my head!

Hell if you look a Rory i'd be tempted to say modern day golf!!!

 

I don't even watch/play or have ever been interested in football but I know there's more too it than that. It's not as if they just pitch up to a game once or twice a week and that's it, like you would for a Sunday local league with your mates. They do have to train as well, and that can be really exerting. They'll have fitness sessions, team coordination exercises, ball skills, physical assessments etc. That's physically and mentally taxing, no different to many other sports either.

Tennis is a good example. A player who's had a serious match more recently against a tough opponent is at a massive disadvantage, often players will lose out for this reason (remember that Isner/Mahut marathon at Wimbledon a while back?).

That being said, I won't stand up for their ability to take injuries. Obviously real things do happen, but there's a tendency to exaggerate small issues too, which isn't the case in many other sports (tennis isn't great either in this regard).

 

Yes, that is exactly the case.

You also seem to be forgetting the fact that on top of that they do several days of training per week for said games.

 

I am almost in tears reading these comments that the poor darlings are not fit enough to train several days a week and play football twice a week. I blame FIFA then for allowing this travesty to go on. And why aren't the players agents insisting that their charges only play once a week?

 

Disclaimer: I don't follow sport. Closest I get to following sport is a semi-annual dose of NHL.

Footballers seem to be, mostly, physically fit people with a tendency towards being a bit mentally challenged (Although whether that's because other sports mental handicaps aren't as broadly televised, I don't know). Also a tendency towards being a bit of a girls blouse when compared with other similarly dimensioned sports such as Rugby.

Also, I don't get the comparison of motor sports (bike or otherwise) to athletics such as football, rugby, hockey, whatever.

Yes, the people operating the vehicle are fit for their chosen sport. Yes, they're probably fitter than me. Yes, riding a bike with a broken ankle would be interesting (Given to understand, as I am, that there's a lot of ankle action in changing gears and other such nonsense), but chasing a bag of wind for 90+ minutes on a broken ankle would be excruciating, and even the toughest pain-numb meat head wouldn't manage that I suspect.

Different strokes for different folks.

I do find it amusing that we, as a public, shout advice at arguably the best athletes in the world (In whatever sport) from our chairs. Yes, I am paraphrasing Dylan Moran.

I also find their pay somewhat disproportionate to what they do. Even if you factor in "They're only going to be working X years" arguments. I'm not sure it's entirely fair that a man chasing a bag of wind while dribbling (Admittedly impressive) is worth more than a man researching <insert affliction>.

 

Is the real issue here that many prominent footballers and managers simply appear to be divas, pansies, jerks and degenerates, so it's easier to call them out?

 

Having swam in the nationals for several year and having played Waterpolo for GB for a number of years in my early 20's, and still maintaining a national standard for 'polo in my 30's - along with competing in my age group for middle distance triathlons, i'll shout all I want!! haha!