It’s the bane of a footballer’s life. Not a salary cap, not kiss-and-tell scandals or even the dreaded, and eternally-blamed Credit Crunch (always a capital C for Credit Crunch). No, for any footballer- amateur or professional- the fear of injury is the biggest of all.

Over the past few years football fans have edged towards the realms of medical experts, with every squeal, tackle, twist or bruise being diagnosed not just by the physios at the scene, but by the millions watching on TV and in the stands too. “Looks like Gerrard’s done his metatarsal there”, “You could see his abductor muscle go”, “Compound fracture by the looks of it” can often be heard as yet another finely tuned athlete crumples to the turf in (genuine) agony. But what are the most common injuries sustained in the sport? And what do they actually mean?

Common Footballing Injuries

The Knee Injury

Perhaps the most susceptible parts of a footballer’s anatomy are his/her knees. They are central to everything required in order to play the game. The strain on a modern footballer’s knees is absolutely huge, make no mistake about that. Every twist, turn, dart, spin, pass, shot, collision, tackle takes it’s toll on a player throughout their career.

The most serious knee injury has to be the cruciate ligament tear, sustained by the likes of Michael Owen, Alan Shearer, Michael Essien, Ruud Van Nistelrooy & Robert Pires to name but a few. This occurs when the knee is jarred or twisted away from the body with sufficient force. The cruciate ligaments (so called because of their cross-shape) stop the tibia (shin bone) from moving forwards on the femur (thigh bone). Therefore, if the cruciate ligament is ruptured, the knee lacks stability, and is liable to collapse or give way at any point. A torn or ruptured cruciate ligament requires surgery, with a tendon graft from either the hamstring or the patella (kneecap) taken, and knitted through the knee to form a new cruciate ligament. This usually rules a player out for seven to ten months, although more complex cases can take longer, and more straightforward ones can be quicker.

Another serious knee injury is the Cartilage tear. Cartilage tears (meniscus) accounted for 12% of all Premiership injuries in the PhysioRoom.com 2004/2005 analysis of injuries. Cartilage is found in the knee joint, connecting two Menisi. As the knee joint bends the thigh bone usually rolls, spins and glides on the top surface of the shin bone. However, if there is rotation caused by a twist whilst the joint is bearing weight, the Menisci can get jammed and nipped in between the two bones. If the force is sufficient, a tear of the Meniscus cartilage will occur. A cartilage tear will usually result in surgery to repair it, and a player can be out of action for anything up to or even beyond six months.

Having strong quadriceps and hamstring muscles that can deal with the strain on the knee joint is recommended to reduce the risk of injury which is why footballers work hard in the gym to strengthen these muscles. Small cartilage tears can usually be sorted with physiotherapy treatment but more significant cartilage tears may require surgery. Following surgery, a period of 4 to 6 weeks physiotherapy is usually required. Aside from surgery, glucosamine chondroitin is relatively new to the world of sports injury treatment but research into its effectiveness at improving recovery rate from injury and reducing the amount/severity of joint pain has been very encouraging.

Read More: The Cruciate Ligament

The Foot Injury

The metatarsal eh? Mention that to someone in 1995 and you would have been greeted with a look that bore resemblance to the one Mark Lawrenson wears when asked to provide something of genuine insight into football.

It has always existed of course; the bones in our feet have always been broken. But until David Beckham was clattered by Deportivo La Coruña’s Aldo Duscher in March 2002, no one had heard of this evil ailment. Beckham and his metatarsal, predictably, dominated the sports pages right up until he was (perhaps prematurely) declared fit for World Cup 2002, with various others following in Becks’ footsteps and picking up this new trendy injury, ruling themselves out of the same tournament. They included Beckham’s best mate Gary Neville, and Danny Murphy (who had only been selected as a late replacement for his Liverpool colleague Steven Gerrard- a groin injury victim).

Since then, we have seen Wayne Rooney’s appearances at Euro 2004 & World Cup 2006 limited by the same injury, with Gerrard, Michael Owen & Roy Keane amongst a clutch of players to suffer the same fate. The injury basically means that one (or more) of the five small bones leading to the toes has been fractured, usually done by impact from a tackle, but also done in more innocuous circumstances- as was the case with Wayne Rooney against Portugal in Euro 2004.

The standard recovery time seems to be around 2 months, although Rooney- aided by the use of an oxygen tent to speed up recovery- recovered from his second metatarsal injury in 2006 within six weeks, whilst Owen took around four months to recover from his own injury, ironically just in time for the same World Cup that Rooney was striving to reach.

These injuries sparked large debate in the media about the standard of protection offered to players both from referees, and from modern day football boots. Many experts opined that in their efforts to make boots as lightweight and flexible as humanly possible, boot manufacturers had sacrificed the protection against injuries such as the metatarsal that older, more traditional football boots had afforded. And whilst that is nigh-on impossible to prove conclusively, the rise in metatarsal cases since Duscher clattered Beckham, and the world learnt a new word, is blatant.

Also read: The Metatarsal

The Hamstring/Groin Strain

The function of the hamstring muscles, at the back of the thighs, is to give flexibility to the knee and hip, allowing players to stretch their legs, run at pace and turn quickly. Often players can suffer tears to these muscles when running, stretching or turning, sometimes even when striking the ball.

A torn hamstring usually comes under three categories, first, second and third degree. The recovery period, and treatment advised, depends on the severity of the tear. A first degree tear can often be treated within 1-2 weeks, a second degree tear within 3-5 weeks and a third degree tear can take anything between 6 weeks and 20 weeks. Players to have suffered this type of tear include Michael Owen, when at Liverpool, and Craig Bellamy, when at Newcastle.

Like the hamstring, a common injury sustained when turning, stretching or moving with the ball is the torn groin. A groin strain can vary in its severity, with the least serious groin strains keeping a player out of action for only a week or two, and the more severe strains requiring surgery which can keep a player laid low for up to three months. Players to have suffered from this injury include Steven Gerrard, Alan Shearer and, surprise surprise, Michael Owen.

Unlike the broken leg or the cruciate ligament injury, there are measures that can be taken to help prevent such injuries. These include:

• Thorough warm up/warm down, to ensure muscles are up to speed before playing/training.
• Ice baths, to cool down the muscles and ensure a good flow of oxygen reaches them
• Cycling shorts/compression shorts- to keep the muscles warm.

Read More: The Hamstring

The Broken Leg

Ahh, the biggie. The broken leg. Aesthetically this injury is the most horrific or spectacular (depending on your stance). It is also an injury that usually requires participation from another player. When Arsenal’s Eduardo Da Silva broke his leg sickeningly at Birmingham last season, Arsene Wenger saw the incident as proof that his theory of teams deliberately setting out to rough up his side was correct. Wenger soon retracted his ill-judged comments about the offender, Martin Taylor, but over the past few seasons there is no doubt that there has been a major clampdown (in the Premier League at least) on potentially dangerous, studs-up tackles. Any tackle that even threatens to go over the top of the ball in the Premier League now is deemed a sending off offence, with normally placid players such as Robbie Keane & Steed Malbranque seeing red for far from malicious tackles. However, if the safety of the players is improved as a result, it will always get my vote.

A broken leg once meant the threat of a career finishing. Not so these days, a player will usually be out of plaster in three months or less, and can even be back playing within six. Djibril Cisse suffered two horrendous leg breaks between 2004 and 2006, and has recovered strongly from both within around six months. Conversely, West Ham midfielder Kieron Dyer suffered a leg break in a Carling Cup match with Bristol Rovers in August 2007, and is yet to make his comeback. Different bodies, different recoveries.

Read more: The Broken Leg

Football Physios

The role of the physio has changed enormously as a result of improved technology and medical research, not just in football, but society as a whole. The days where the physio (often doubling as “First team trainer”) would waddle onto the field to attend to an injured player with nothing but a window-cleaner’s bucket and a freezing cold sponge are, thankfully, well gone. Nowadays a physio has to give an instant assessment of a player’s fitness, mindset, risk, and treatment. The stakes are so high in football that an injured player simply cannot be carried, so a physio has to decide whether a manager can trust his wounded player to continue, or whether he should plunge into his subs.

Day to day, physios work tirelessly at club training grounds to ensure that the highly paid, highly talented stars are in the best possible shape to take to the field of a weekend. Most clubs will find eight to ten players with slight strains and niggles at the end of a routine training session, the physios have the task of ironing out these creases through exercises, massages and various other wild and wonderful treatments.

Who can forget Glenn Hoddle’s infamous adoption of the faith healer, Eileen Drewery, during his tenure as England manager. It was often used as a stick to beat him with after his enforced resignation, but it showed Hoddle as a man who was willing to use any means necessary to get that extra 0.00001% from his players. Not that Ray Parlour appreciated it, his visit to Drewery ended in hilarious circumstances when he requested “a short back and sides please”.

Football Injury Facts

• In August 2008, former Manchester United trainee Benjamin Collett was awarded a record £4.3m in damages following a tackle from former Middlesbrough defender Gary Smith, in a reserve team match in 2003. Collett earned £3.9m for loss of future earnings, £450,000 for loss of past earnings, and around £40,000 in compensation. Both Middlesbrough & Smith admitted liability over the tackle, which left Collett with a leg broken in two places and forced him to retire from the game soon after.
• Manchester City goalkeeper Bert Trautmann was a hell of a man. That’s fair to say. During World War II he earned five medals for bravery, including an iron cross. But, not satisifed with that, he then proceeded to produce one of the most incredible FA Cup final performances of all time. In 1956, Manchester City were leading Birmingham 3-1 with fifteen minutes to go, Trautmann dived at the feet of Brum striker Peter Murphy, breaking a bone in his neck.

  With no substitutes permitted, Trautmann was forced to stay on the field for the remainder of the match, making a couple of crucial interventions. It was not until three days after the final that the full extent of the injury was learnt, An X-ray revealed he had dislocated five vertebrae in his neck, the second of which was cracked in two. The third vertebra had wedged against the second, preventing further damage which could have cost Trautmann his life.

• Gerry Byrne wasn’t particularly weak either. In 1965 he played for Liverpool in their first ever FA Cup win, a 2-1 success over Leeds. The game is remembered by many for Liverpool’s winner, a diving header from Ian St John. But for Byrne, the memory is of a third minute collision with Leeds skipper Bobby Collins, which left the Reds left back with a broken collarbone.

  Miraculously, he managed to soldier on for the ninety minutes. Plus extra time! He even managed to set up Roger Hunt’s opening goal with some attacking full back play. Some man!

• Contrast that to Elena Marcelino of Newcastle fame (or should that be infamy). Signed by the Magpies for a fee in excess of £5.5m in 1999, Marcelino was restricted to just seventeen first team appearances in three years on Tyneside. Still at least he had a good reason, a snapped finger tendon keeping him out of action for almost three months of his first season at the club! Gerry & Bert wouldn’t have even noticed!
• Not forgetting the original “Sicknote”, Mr Darren Anderton. And whilst the tag has become synonymous with the former Portsmouth & Spurs midfielder, further research suggests that Mr Anderton may well have been harshly labelled. In his career, Anderton has played a total of 478 competitive games, spread across seventeen seasons. That equals out at an average of 28.1 games per season. Hardly at the level of, oh I don’t know, Kieron Dyer (24 games per season average). Indeed, only three times has Anderton’s season appearances total been below 20 (admittedly, in three successive seasons from 1995-1998).

So there you have it, an overview of modern football injuries, what they entail, how long a player will be missing, and the role of the physio in the modern game. To sign off, here’s a video compilation (god bless YouTube) of funny (and often painful) football injuries:

Football Injuries Video

Also See: Top 20 Weird & Wonderful Football Injuries, Top 10 Horror Football Injuries.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

In the current climate of renewable energy and methods of preserving the planet’s resources, it is a likely progression that the world’s most popular sport should adopt some ‘green’ measures to play their part.

However, in such a consumer-based industry it is at times difficult to envisage how football can contribute to the greater good and minimise the continued destruction of resources. Are there environmentally friendly changes that can be made for the good of us all?

Gary Neville is a well-known advocate of eco-friendly measures, and donated all the profits made from his testimonial match for Manchester United against Juventus in 2011 to Sustainability in Sport, an organisation he set up to encourage the use of renewable energy and environmental methods of running the game.

The former England defender built a house with its power generated entirely by wind and solar power, and Sustainability in Sport are trying to convince football clubs to incorporate these methods also. The organisation also pushes shared transport in the travel to and from games, with low-carbon minibuses being suggested as a potential way of cutting down on the use of fuel.

With the huge heat and light systems used to power stadiums and training grounds, Neville has also campaigned for low-impact technology to cut down on the extortionate amount of electricity it takes to run a large complex or property.

Similarly, new stadiums that were constructed for the 2006 World Cup in Germany had environmental considerations at heart whilst they were being built. The Gottlieb-Daimler stadium in Stuttgart, later renamed the Mercedes-Benz Arena, was sure that environmental protection was also part of the extensive modernisation measures, with collected rainwater being reused to water the pitch and rinsing the toilets.

With a huge roof over the playing surface, the water that naturally collects on the roof is collected and stored in an underground cistern, saving on the wastage of drinking water.

Added to this is the development of a range of environmentally friendly sporting equipment. Across the globe many sports have adopted bats, balls, helmets, footwear and clothing that is produced in a way beneficial to the environment. With the huge amount of teams and sports in active play, there is no reason why your club could not generate their latest football strips in an eco-friendly fashion.

This also applies to all replica fans strips, which will comprise of millions of pieces of clothing the world over.

The buck stops with the mass producers with this responsibility, with the likes of Nike and Adidas having their production methods questioned in the past. However, in the media anyway, the big sports equipment producers seem to have shown some commitment to at least trying to make their production methods more eco-friendly.

For the 2010 World Cup all teams with their kits made by Nike had their strips produced by recycled polyester, with each shirt reportedly comprising eight recycled plastic bottles. This is now an industry standard, with Nike manufacturing the kit for the likes of Arsenal and Barcelona with plastic bottles found in landfill sites in Japan and Taiwan.

Similarly, Adidas are currently running a five-year Environmental Strategy to drastically use less resources, produce fewer omissions and make the company eco-friendly at a corporate level.

All in all there are changes being made in the footballing world to make the game more environmentally friendly, with ‘green football’ certainly having potential. However, with other priorities and everything that is tied up with the sport, one feels that government legislation or a more concerted effort is required to take the step to the next level.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Today, as you may or mayn’t be aware, is 4/20 – The International Day of the Stoner.

With that in mind, we thought we’d turn a wry (or should that be ‘red’?) eye on the footballing sphere and pick out a few candidates in need of the meditative, healing powers of marijuana and also finger (so to speak) some of the huffing, puffing, smoking, joking midnight tokers who have almost definitely  - but not definitely enough for it to be libellous in any way – inhaled a lung-full of the Lord’s divine brocolli at one point in their lives…

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1. Clint Dempsey - He may well be in the process of racking up his most impressive season in the Premier League to date, but that doesn't disguise the fact that Dempsey always looks like he's coming into every game off the back of a three-day bender. Heavily be-stubbled, sweat-slathered and dark purple rings orbiting swollen, bulging, bloodshot eyes? Textbook signs of a man who has probably spent the preceeding 72 hours behind closed curtains doing nothing but playing multi-player COD till the cows came home and existing solely on a diet of Chili Heatwave Doritos.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Football is the biggest sport in the world.

Its England’s national sport, beloved by millions and one of the few things, if not the only thing that really unites us a country and creates any sort of national spirit for a couple of weeks every two years (four or more years if we balls things up and don’t even qualify). There are TV and radio stations devoted under the guise of ‘sport’ to relentlessly stuff football down your throat till your gagging and choking.

So if football is so popular, then why as a nation do we put up with idiots giving us patronising dull stupid dumb drivel for every game we watch?

To quote a younger but always magnificent Danny Baker, sports departments on TV ‘are the last bastion of slack, feeble, smug, shoddy, empty, crass, lumbering clichéd lamebrain semi-masonic outrage’. Every week these moronic imbecilic self-satisfied buffoons put Shearer, Hansen, Lawrenson and others on the Match of the Day sofa.

These people don’t inform us of anything, do little but commentate over footage we’ve already seen, use every cliché in the Football Book of Cliches (which must be the size of Eric Pickles’s bill at McDonalds) and do sod all except irritate the hell out of the watching public.

Why are all football pundits ex-players though? Film critics aren’t directors or actors, food critics aren’t chefs, why are football pundits always ex-footballers? Is it because you have to have played football at a high level to talk about it? That’s nonsense.

I’ve played enough football to know all the basics of the game and read a damn sight more Jonathan Wilson books than any pundit ever has. To take this point further, I’ve never manufactured a table or a chair. But I know a good chair from a bad one, in the same way that though I’ve never played top level footballer I know a good team and a good player from bad ones.

Of course if ex-footballers were as eloquent and thought provoking as ex-cricketers then it wouldn’t be a problem, but footballers lack the intelligence and telegenic qualities of pundits in other sports, along with having grating voices more likely to give you tinnitus than an appreciation of say Victor Moses in the Wigan attack. They know nothing of tactics or methods of playing the game (or if they do they pretend not to), have no natural eloquence and also treat football with incredible faux seriousness.

The Sky Sports Soccer Saturday team know no more but are at least light hearted and jovial with it and don’t treat football like a documentary on the famine in Africa. You’ll get some cheap laughs if you’re not irritated by the ‘banter’.

On Match of the Day, transfer deadline day or a big European game on Sky you get this ludicrous seriousness about things. Freddie Sears’ possible loan move to Gillingham or a return of the fitness of the Arsenal goalkeeper in a dreary Champions League group stage game are the sort of things that get hype they don’t deserve.

Worse still is pundits terminology. ‘stonewall’, ‘deffo’, ‘pen, ‘OG’. Not to mention every decision is a definite. It’s a ‘definite foul’, ‘definite free kick’, ‘certain goal’. Well sometimes decisions are contentious. There are incidents in football that are not black and white, occasionally there are several shades of grey (and I’m not referring to Adrian Chiles’s suits).

There’s the foibles – Ray Wilikns saying ‘my word’, Jamie Redknapp saying ‘literally’, Graham Taylor claiming a commonly used word as his own; Gary Lineker’s bad jokes, which are all annoying.

There’s the stereotypes; that Italians are defensive, Germans dull and boring, Spaniards and Portuguese divers. ITV are the worst for this. For example I watched the Barcelona-AC Milan match and saw Jim Beglin condemn every foul as a dive by the player pushed, shoved and hacked by opponents. I somehow doubt he’ll say that when Frank Lampard or Steven Gerrard go down easily in the forthcoming FA Cup final wherever he is commentating.

Pundits are useless. They’re dumb. They can’t talk clearly or humorously. They’re not very good at their jobs with the odd exception (Gary Neville and Lee Dixon spring to mind-both right backs incidentally) and get paid handsomely for not being good at their jobs. Yet they’re a ubiquitous presence amongst football matches and programs.

And you know why?

Because we the public deserve them. With people’s dumb questions on 606 and Talksport, their hair trigger propensity to take offence at every perceived slight at their club, the refusal to embrace any sort of intellectual talk on the game, we get what we deserve, reap what we sow. Dumb stupid ineloquent lethargic coma inducing xenophobic foghorning walruses. Literally. My word.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

April 20th (4-20) is Cannabis day. In that context, today we look at the relationship between the world’s most popular sport (football) and the world’s third-most popular recreational drug (after tobacco and alcohol).

Marijuana, Football and the Law

When you think about footballers and drugs, it’s either performance-enhancing substances or hard drugs like cocaine. Occasionally, it’s the heavy drinking culture (England) or a footballer smoking off the pitch (the horror!).

Cannabis (also known as marijuana or hashish) doesn’t come into the picture, which is strange given the prevalent nature of the substance in Europe and the Americas. Attitudes towards Marijuana range from strict criminalisation in the US (where, in my personal opinion, the war on drugs has served to strengthen the police state and done little to clamp down on recreational drug usage – i.e. marijuana)and UK, to decriminalisation and legalisation in Netherlands where soft drug use (marijuana) has been neatly separated from hard drug use (cocaine, etc).

Just as statistics on homosexuality make you realise that there are more gay footballers in the sport than the football WAGs would make you think, the marijuana usage numbers in countries like UK, Netherlands, Spain, France, Italy, Germany and US (20% to 35% of young adults have used cannabis at least once in these countries) suggest that footballers have used marijuana recreationally at a young age.

But this gets (understandably) suppressed. Along with the fact that cannabis is an illegal drug in England, evidence of usage can also show up in the bloodstream, making drug tests an uncomfortable predicament in more ways than one.

To date there’s one reported incident of a footballer admitting to marijuana addiction – but when you look at the partying lifestyles of modern footballers, there is no question that they have, at one time or the other, smoked weed.

More importantly, it shouldn’t matter if they’ve smoked pot as long as it doesn’t affect their football on the pitch (playing football while high is a different topic altogether). While we don’t (for legal reasons) advise you to call your local Iranian fellow to score today, there’s no harm in recreational drug usage that doesn’t a) harm others, b) affect your ability to get your work done and c) doesn’t lead to hard drugs that can seriously damage your life and of those around you.

As the coffee shops in Netherlands and the general productivity and professionalism of the Dutch shows, recreational marijuana use is not the monster it’s made out to be.

Footballers and Marijuana

Apart from the Colombian footballer story linked to above, I couldn’t find any reports of footballers lighting up.

And while I’d love to do a photo gallery of footballers who look perpetually stoned (if Pies doesn’t get to it first), the truth is that footballers get snapped smoking and drinking but will take out injunctions to cover up their private lives where they’re not even breaking the law, so the amount of cover-ups / paranoid secrecy here amongst stoned footballers must be through the roof.

Do we know any footballers? No (although I have my suspicions, see below) and even if we did, we couldn’t name them for legal reasons. Having said that, when you’ve got Snoop Dogg getting OAP farmers to have a smoke, you only wonder what happened behind the scenes when Snoop met up with Rio Ferdinand, or David Beckham for that matter.

I’m not suggesting that Rio Ferdinand or David Beckham have smoked marijuana…I’m just saying Snoop has a reputation, that’s all.

When almost all celebrities (yes, there’s a correlation between being young / rich / famous and drug use) admit to or are reported lighting up, footballers are unlikely to be left behind. It may not improve their playing abilities before the game, but it sure as hell takes the edge off, which may explain some of the performances by footballers in any given season.

Bonus: For pro athletes – the risks of smoking pot are high – but so are the benefits.

Watching Football in Smoke

There are no such qualms about marijuana consumption when it comes to watching football. ‘Reliable sources’ tell us that some of the best football viewing experiences (or sports viewing experiences) they’ve ever had have come while they’ve been under the influence of either weed or alcohol. It doesn’t matter if you’re watching it at home or live in the stadium, although live viewing alongside a crowd generally lends itself better to drinking than smoking up.

Home viewing though – and this forms the majority of how football fans around the world watch the game – is immeasurably improved if you’re under the influence. In fact, even if your team loses two Champions League finals in three years or gets beaten 6-1 at home in a city derby in the most sickening way possible, the influence helps you keep a sense of perspective, and generally, have a good time while others around you lose their shit.

Since cannabis is illegal in most countries (yay Netherlands for the coffee shops), it’s probably easier for you to drink beer at home than roll up (and that’s exactly what the ‘sponsors’ want you to do, btw). Even in countries like Pakistan where the sale and consumption of alcohol is banned by law and the consumption of hashish is sometimes seen as religously acceptable (nutbags), you’ll find good quality booze easier than you will find good quality hashish.

I suppose economics has something to do with it – there’s more money to be made in getting people to drink and act impulsively than there is in getting them to light up and chill out (although it’s a boon for online shopping).

As an aside – why is it socially acceptable in England to show up at a football stadium piss drunk but unacceptable to smoke a single joint? How does a whole society get away with killing itself through drinking but freaks out at one person smoking one joint?

England has the highest rate of alcoholism amongst teenage girls in Europe – a statistic that says everything about the country’s future children. England (like many other countries) has a serious cocaine and ecstasy abuse issue as well. But cannabis? How does getting high and staying at home watching football on the telly hurt anyone?

Bottom line – you cause less damage to yourself and to those around you by smoking a single joint (cheaper too) than you do by drinking a couple of pints. Except for the sponsors though – they still want your money. If you’re inclined, drink a beer with that joint and call it even.

Playing Football While High

Remember when we said before that smoking up before a game does not help your performance levels? When it comes to amateur football, that thinking goes straight out of the window. As countless people in colleges, universities and sports enthusiasts in general have reported, you enjoy playing football (or any other sport) a lot more when you’re high than when you’re sober.

You may not play as well, and your tackling may become Scholes-like while your passing is anything but, but at least you’ll be seeing the ball as well as anyone who’s in the form of their life. And as someone suggests on this thread, smoking up is just as much fun after the game.

Drinking before a game (or after it) is worse for your health than it is to light up a joint. It’s worse for your teammates as well, as your mental checks are lowered and you may end up in an alcohol-fueled situation that causes injury to you or to someone else. But a high footballer? How many people do you see fighting when they’re high (as opposed to when they’re drunk)?

If you play football – casually or regularly – no one will know if you make it a special occasion this weekend. As long as you can stop yourself from smiling like an idiot all the time, that is.

Marijuana and the football fan

At the end of the day, if you’re going to be playing or watching football this weekend and you plan to light up, enjoy your vegetation of choice responsibly.

And for those of you celebrating Cannabis day, 4:20 pm on a Friday is as good a time as any all week.

To comment on this article, you can contact us via Twitter or Facebook, or drop us an email.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

When you look at many of football’s top talents, both past and present, many of them were/are gifted athletes, blessed with natural gifts that enable them to live the dream, to be idolized, immortalized, and imitated.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that they don’t like to partake in activities that aren’t necessarily good for those physical gifts. We see or hear about footballers and their nights out on the town, which is no real surprise. But along with a good drink, quite a few footballers enjoy a smoke as well.

Many would say that the relationship between footballers and cigarettes is one that should be limited to minimal contact, at most, but old habits do die hard, and for better or worse, smoking has long had its connections to football.

Football: A History of Smoke

For more than a century, football and smoking have been closely linked, even through players who didn’t even care for the habit.

Starting in the late 1890s, packs of cigarettes began to include cards with images of footballers of that time, and it was only inevitable that footballers would begin to advertise cigarettes. In the 1930s, Everton star Dixie Dean promoted Carreras Clubs, a budget cigarette brand. Two decades later, the great Stanley Matthews, who wasn’t even a smoker, promoted Craven A cigarettes.

It’s understandable why a tobacco company would want to employ a footballer to advertise their products, due to the obvious target audience at the time. If a star footballer, the epitome of a manly man, smoked (or looked like he did), then that’d make it all the more likely the average man would follow suit or begin to smoke that specific brand of cigarettes.

Around the time that Matthews got into cigarette promotion, research was coming out that linked smoking to cancer, but that didn’t affect the habits of many, as the below section indicates. However, even before those studies, there were some managers who didn’t care for smoking to be around their teams.

For example, Herbert Chapman, who managed Huddersfield Town and Arsenal to great success in the 1920s and 30s, asked potential signing Eddie Hapgood whether or not he drank or smoke prior to signing him for Arsenal in 1927.

Also, Frank Buckley, who managed Wolves from 1927-44, gave his players a pocketbook that included a code of conduct, with a couple of his expectations being for his players to not smoke and to not socialize for at least two days before a match.

Smoking Footballers

There is a long, long list of past footballers who smoked during their careers. Here are some of the most notable examples.

In his autobiography, Newcastle legend Jackie Milburn revealed that, prior to the 1951 FA Cup final against Blackpool, he went to the bathroom at Wembley to have a smoke, and he found four of his teammates already there smoking. He promptly went out and scored both goals in a 2-0 Newcastle win.

Leeds legend Jack Charlton, who won the World Cup with England in 1966 and later managed the Republic of Ireland to its greatest successes in the 1980s and 90s, smoked prolifically as a player, and he was actually photographed with a cigarette in his mouth while at training with Leeds.

Dutch maestro Johan Cruyff used to smoke 20 cigarettes a day, but he was forced to give it up in 1991 when he had double heart bypass surgery. Since then, he’s been the face of an anti-smoking campaign that was sponsored by the Catalan Department of Health.

Argentine star Ossie Ardiles, who played for Tottenham for a decade and has managed Spurs and Newcastle, among many others, reportedly smoked 40 cigarettes a day during his career.

The late Brazilian legend Socrates drank like a fish, and he smoked like a chimney, smoking two packs of cigarettes a day during his playing career.

Former Real Madrid/Barcelona/Portsmouth/Croatia star Robert Prosinecki, who helped lead Red Star Belgrade to a famous European Cup triumph in 1991 and now manages the club, smoked more than 40 cigarettes a day during the height of his playing career, though it’s reported that he’d cut down to 20 by the time he went to Portsmouth in 2001.

Gianluca Vialli, who starred for Sampdoria, Juventus, and Chelsea and recorded almost 60 caps for Italy, was a regular smoker during his playing career, and he continued to do so when he managed Chelsea and Watford.

Former France and Manchester United #1 Fabien Barthez smoked throughout his career, a fact that wasn’t unknown to Sir Alex Ferguson. Barthez wasn’t the only member of France’s 1998 World Cup-winning side that enjoyed or enjoys smoking, as Zinedine Zidane – who was part of an anti-smoking campaign in 2002 – was seen casually smoking a cigarette prior to a 2006 World Cup semifinal against Portugal.

While it’s not nearly as prevalent as it once was, for numerous reasons, there are still quite a few well-known current footballers who enjoy a puff or three.

Manchester United strikers Wayne Rooney, Dimitar Berbatov, and Federico Macheda have all been spotted with cigarettes at various locales. In fact, if there was a current footballer who’d fit right into one of the smoking advertisements of the past, it’d be Berbatov, without a doubt.

Macheda isn’t the only Italian footballer who’s been known to light up. Eccentric Manchester City striker Mario Balotelli enjoys ‘maybe five or six a day’, according to manager Roberto Mancini, who’s not too pleased about the habit. Also, Gianluigi Buffon, Vincenzo Iaquinta, and Alessandro Nesta, all members of the Italy squad that won the 2006 World Cup, have all been snapped smoking.

After fronting Portsmouth’s anti-smoking campaign in 2008, former England keeper David James confessed in his column for The Observer that he smoked 20 cigarettes a day from when he was 15 until he was 30, when he dropped the habit. The change was for the better, as 51 of the 53 England caps he picked up from 1997-2010 came from 2001-10, and he’s still going strong as Bristol City’s #1 at the age of 41.

Smoking Managers

Former Mexico and Costa Rica coach Ricardo Lavolpe received a warning from FIFA in regards to his smoking on the touchline during the 2006 World Cup with Mexico.

If Lavolpe had been a manager a few decades earlier, he’d have been in the clear. In 1978, Argentina hosted and won the World Cup for the first time, and leading the triumph was manager and chain smoker extraordinaire Cesar Luis Menotti, who smoked as much as he pleased on the touchline.

In 1982, another smoke-loving manager, Enzo Bearzot, led Italy to World Cup glory. However, unlike many others, his preference was for the pipe, which was a fixture in his mouth during Italy’s World Cup run.

Croatian manager Slaven Bilic smoked cigarettes before games during his playing days, according to former West Ham teammate Frank Lampard, and he has carried on with the habit as a manager.

On the club scene, a smoking legend of yesteryear was Malcolm Allison, who was assistant manager on the last Manchester City side to win a top-division title and later had two spells as City manager. Allison, who also led Crystal Palace to the FA Cup semis in 1976 and Sporting Lisbon to a league title in 1982, loved his fedoras, his women, his drink, and last but not least, his cigars.

There aren’t many prominent club managers known to do smoke at present, but one who does is Napoli boss Walter Mazzarri, as indicated by here and here.

Smoking in Football Stadiums

For any smoker who plans to take a trip to see football in the UK, it’s important to note the smoking ban that’s been in place since July 2007. Since that time, smoking has been banned at any Football League ground. However, if you’re a fan of a non-league side, you might still be in luck, as smoking is still permitted in grounds that don’t have a roof.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can automatically light up, because specific grounds can have their own (non)smoking policies in place.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

The 2012 European Championships will kick off this summer in Poland and Ukraine. The Euro 2012 betting hugely favours Spain and Germany, but beyond the favourites and indeed beyond the 16 teams competing at Euro 2012, there are plenty of footballing lessons for Pakistan and Pakistani football to learn from, and hopefully apply to our own national team’s cause.

This is not to say that Pakistan can reach the level of European giants with a few simple fixes. Instead, what we’re looking at are long-term, gradual changes that help Pakistan be more competitive in Asian football and then, if not in a decade then in two, mount a serious challenge for World Cup qualification. For the 6th most populous country in the world, that’s not an unreasonable objective to aim for.

Investment in grassroots training and development infrastructure

European countries that succeed internationally more or less have the same pattern when it comes to youth development – find talent at an early age and groom them as much as possible. At this point a comparison between England and Netherlands is most apt – where English schoolchildren – quite like our own – are overburdened by school timings and homework, Dutch schoolchildren have a more balanced lifestyle, dedicating equal time to education and play. The end result is that when these same players grow up, the Dutch counterparts are technically much more proficient than their English counterparts.

And then there is considerable investment made in footballing academies and training for children in Netherlands – something that is glaringly lacking in England.

What can we learn from this in Pakistan? For starters, there needs to be a cultural change that promotes a positive, balanced lifestyle, increasing competitive play time and decreasing school load, and most importantly, getting kids out of the house, away from the TVs and gaming consoles and into parks and grounds and academies where they can hone their skills. There are unique security challenges in Pakistan that don’t apply anywhere else but even then, there is plenty of room for improvement, especially when it comes to parents and their priorities for their children.

Secondly, you can invest / incentivise football training academies by providing football training equipment (like the M Station) and qualified coaches that work with the national football association to develop and implement training programs for different age levels.

All of this costs money, which brings us to point number two:

Heavy financial investment in Pakistan’s sporting future

This applies to other sports as well, but for now we’re just looking at football. In terms of international perception, few things are as ‘game-changing’ as sporting success. Few things can galvanise a nation’s energies and improve the national mood as well as sporting success. Smart investment in Pakistan’s footballing future can take the country from where it is now (a laughing stock) to legitimate WC qualification contenders – and just that step up can help change the mood in Pakistan and about Pakistan at a local and international level.

The most successful footballing countries in Europe make football a national priority when it comes to spending, to national / political importance and to investing in the future. Add the social and health benefits to the cultural changes associated with a sport-loving population and there is considerable motivation to invest – smartly – in Pakistan’s footballing / sporting future.

How to do that? That takes us to our third point.

Leverage the strong football support in Pakistan

Football is easily the second most popular sport in Pakistan. It does not have as active a participation as cricket but it more than makes up for it by the sheer number of people who watch, follow and enjoy football. This support comes from all sections of society – from children who play in school and after school to parents who support a European club or team to university students and working professionals who find common ground with their colleagues in sport (a pleasant departure from our other national past-time, debating politics).

This widespread support needs to be tapped into and leveraged to create the levels of local and government-level investment required for long-term footballing success in Pakistan. You can’t simply rely on the government for all the support – although in most countries that is where the support originates – you also need to tap into the existing football fanbase and convert it from passive followers to active participants in the country’s footballing future.

In Europe – there are plenty of examples of countries who have prioritised football at a national and social level with long-term planning to achieve success 10, 20, 30 years down the line. It’s how Brazil re-invented themselves in the 90s, it’s how France become such a global force in the 80s and 90s, and it’s how Spain started their dominance – by investing in grassroots football 10, 15, 20 years ago.

Football is not cricket, where Pakistan has a 50 year head start on most countries only 7-8 countries are any good at the sport. It’s a truly global sport, and Pakistan as a footballing nation has languished far behind through neglect and a general lack of understanding of what’s needed to fix football.

But if you can tap into the local fanbase and galvanise them into action, if you can provide quality training from a young age and if you can finance the whole operation, Pakistan can realistically be a force to be reckoned with in Asia, if not the world over.

This article was originally published on Football Pakistan. The author, Ahmed Bilal, can be contacted via Twitter.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Football finance has been a hot topic for several years now, and we often cite the influx of Sky money, the formation of the Premier League, the modernisation of FIFA and UEFA, football club takeovers and of course, the rise of player wages as key indicators of how football has become more and more a business and is completely divorced from the football that we knew a few decades ago.

Part of that is true – football has indeed changed drastically even in the last 30 years (as the below infographic and research shows). But some of those changes are also a natural evolution – football’s global appeal has meant that it has attracted more and more business-minded people looking to take advantage of that global audience. This is the same in any sphere of life – where you have the opportunity to affect people at a large scale, there will always be money-men looking to take advantage. Whether this aspect of our lives – and this power grab is nothing new to human civilisations – is a necessary evil or the devil’s doing is a debate for another day.

Today we look at how English football finances have evolved in the last 30 years (1981 to 2011). We look at ticket prices, player wages, transfer fees, average british earnings as a comparison and we also look at how the laws of the game and success for football clubs has changed in this time.

If you enjoy this article, please share it with those who you think would like to read this too.

See the full-size version: English Football Finance – 1981 to 2011.

Ticket Prices

One of the major changes in the game over the last 30 years has been the increase in ticket prices, with the average person struggling to afford a season ticket to see their team in action these days. In the last three decades, the biggest teams’ one-off ticket prices have soared also. From 1989 to 2011 ticket prices to watch Arsenal have increased by 920 per cent from £5 to £51. In 1989 the cheapest price for a ticket to watch Manchester United cost £3.50; in 2011 the least fans can expect to pay is £28. Whilst at Anfield the minimum prices have gone from £4 to £45 in 30 years. Staggeringly, a season ticket to see Kenny Dalglish’s men has skyrocketed from £60 to £725 -a leap of 1,108 per cent.

Player Wages

The amount of money that players get paid has gone through the roof; the first footballer to earn £100-a-week was Jonny Hynes back in 1961, whilst Carlos Tevez now earns £286,000-a-week, which is more than £1 million a month. Notable landmarks are Chris Sutton as the first £10,000-a-week player and Sol Campbell as the trendsetter at the £100,000 mark.

Transfer fees

To bring a new player to your club is not cheap these days, as Trevor Francis’ £1.18 million fee in 1979, then a record, now looks like a bargain. The £30.8 million spent on Andriy Shevchenko will have Chelsea fans quivering in their boots, whilst Cristiano Ronaldo is starting to look like good value for the £80 million Real Madrid shelled out for him in 2009.

Stadium capacities

Surprisingly, the highest capacity stadium in world football is the Rungrado May Day Stadium in North Korea, which holds a whopping 150,000 supporters. Other leading venues are the Estadio Azteca in Mexico and the Salt Lake Stadium in India. The new Wembley Stadium is the ground in the United Kingdom with the highest capacity with 90,000 fans able to fit in, whilst Old Trafford is the biggest club stadium at 75,811.

Average British Earnings

The money earned by the British public has increased over the last 30 years, but so has the number of low-income households. The average yearly wage of £8,566.07 in 1981 has went up to £37,580.11 in 2009, but the low income households have also increased from 8 million to 13.8 million in the same time period.

British football attendances

The increase in the capacity of football stadiums is due to the heightened demand to attend; the beautiful game has never been more popular. Average attendances in the Premier League have went from 24,682 in 1981 to 35,294 in 2011. The biggest clubs such as Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea have much more of a following, with the English champions seeing their average attendance grow by over 30,000 people from 45,071 to 75,109.

English champions

Manchester United lead the way in winning the English top flight, with the Old Trafford outfit crowned champions on 11 occasions since 1981. Liverpool’s success in the 1980′s sees them in second place with six titles, followed by Arsenal with five and Chelsea with three. Everton’s two triumphs are followed by the solitary glory seasons of Blackburn and Leeds.

This season’s Premier League title race is between Manchester’s two clubs, however back in the 1980′s Everton and Liverpool slugged it out for glory, with the Merseyside clubs on top for most of the decade. The 1990′s saw the one-off wins for Leeds and Blackburn, and the emergence of Manchester United as a power in the nation’s game. Arsenal had their success’ in the late 1990′s and early 2000′s, before Chelsea threw their hat in the ring towards the end of the 2000′s, however Sir Alex Ferguson’s men have been a constant challenger and regular winner.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Above all else, in the passion of a competitive football match a player can show his dedication and love for his team by kissing the badge on his jersey. We have seen it on countless occasions – a player scores a winning goal and runs towards his adoring fans kissing the club crest; he is now a hero in the eyes of the celebrating supporters.

However, many footballers have no regard for their former loves, cast aside like yesterday’s news. Many a player has one season kissed the crest of a specific club, only to sign for their rivals the next year.

From Cesc Fabregas breaking Arsenal fans’ hearts by leaving the club a legend and kissing the Barcelona badge, his one true love, on signing for them in the summer of 2011, to Ravel Morrison kissing the United badge before turning down a contract to join West Ham.

Sol Campbell, who most Spurs fans would have lay down in traffic for, kissed the cockerel and was the darling of White Hart Lane only to leave the club on a free transfer. And join Arsenal.

The list is endless, but here are some of the most blatant, shameless, heart-wrenching and tear-inducing badge kisses of recent times:

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From Soccerlens.com - Football News

The ‘vanishing spray’ is used by the referee to mark 10 yards between the ball and the wall at free-kicks. This line is a clear indicator of where the opposition teams should be standing before the free-kick is taken and was introduced in an effort to stop the attacking team gaining advantage by moving closer to the goal and the defensive side from encroaching towards the ball.

Once used, the spray disappears within 45 seconds without affecting the pitch and is seen as a way of tackling long, time-consuming breaks in play in which officials have to monitor encroachment.

The spray was introduced in South America and then trialed at last summer’s Copa America.

The IFAB – International Football Association Board made up of FIFA and the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish federations – is set to meet next month and introduction of the spray (or trials in Europe / other international events) is expected to be on the agenda.

Other key discussion points include allowing a fourth substitution when games run into extra time, additional assistant referees and goal-line technology, although in classic FIFA fashion you shouldn’t expect any technology to be part of football’s decision making in the near future (unless they use Sky’s cameras, that is).

Would you like to see the vanishing spray used in more football matches to prevent unnecessary delays in setting up free kicks? Or do you think that there are other ways that the ‘Authorities’ can penalise time wasting in the game and – given that they argue for the flow of the game when opposing technology – penalise actions by players that deliberately interrupt the flow of the game?

Personally I think that the vanishing spray is a great little idea, but there are much bigger issues that need to be fixed in football, top of the list being video replays.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News