VAR delays blamed for Arsenal’s increase in hamstring injuries | OneFootball

Hamstring injuries have quietly become football’s most common and disruptive physical problem. Kai Havertz, Bukayo Saka, and Gabriel Magalhães are just three Arsenal players among an expanding list of footballers whose seasons were interrupted by damage to theirs.

As the toll rises, sports medicine is starting to offer an explanation that extends beyond fixture congestion.

Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images

Dr Daniel P. Berthold, a Munich-based orthopaedic specialist who treats elite athletes and holds the FIFA Diploma in Football Medicine, believes the modern game has reached a breaking point. “A clear risk profile can be identified,” Berthold told Welt am Sonntag. “The players who complete the most games are usually affected. The central question is: how resilient is the human body still under today’s conditions, and where are the medical limits?”

He attributes a substantial part of the problem to an underappreciated aspect of the Premier League’s game: video assistant referee (VAR) interruptions. “The breaks in England sometimes last four or five minutes, and that three or four times per game. The warm-cold, cold-warm cycle is difficult for the muscle. It just gets tired at some point.”

Berthold says there is no formal study on VAR-related injury correlation, but insists the evidence is mounting. The transition from sprint to stasis and back again, often multiple times in a half, causes neuromuscular fatigue and increased risk, particularly for positions like wingers, full-backs, and centre-forwards that require sprints repeatedly.

Photo via Havertz on Instagram

The stats are starting to support his view that this is an increasing issue. In 2001–02, hamstring problems accounted for around 12 percent of all football injuries. By 2021–22, that figure had doubled to 24 percent. “The incidence of hamstring injuries in training increased by 6.7 percent per year between 2014–15 and 2021–22, and by 3.9 percent in matches,” Berthold noted.

Modern training and playing loads have outpaced recovery cycles. Players like Saka and Havertz regularly feature in matches every 72 hours, frequently playing well into stoppage time. With international tournaments now running longer and the Club World Cup expanding, elite players get ever fewer sustained periods to recover.

Though surgery is increasingly used for professional cases with structural tendon damage, Berthold warns that could reduce long-term resilience. “Of course, the tendon and muscle also heal conservatively, but what results is ultimately a scar, and it is much less resilient at first.”

He urges a return to fundamentals. Cross-training, functional strength work, and structured regeneration are critical. “It is about bringing the tendon to a load, making it more durable. Too one-sided training is almost poison for the thigh.”

As the professional game rests, sort of, ahead of another busy season, Berthold believes two reforms are essential. First, keep the expanded substitution rule introduced during the pandemic.

Second, address the length of VAR stoppages. “The Premier League, which is considered the best league in the world, has the worse system.”