• soccer
• injuries
• training load
• injury prevention

Research and discussions about injury rates and their prevention in elite football is one of the hottest topics in the medical and sport science literature. Over the past years, there has been an explosion of the number of publications, including surveys,1 observational, retrospective or prospective2 studies, training interventions and various types of expert opinions and commentaries.3 This array of information are likely useful to improve our understanding of what the best practices may be and, in turn, increase our ability to better prepare, manage and treat players. However, a recent survey has shown that 83% of UEFA clubs do not follow evidenced-based prevention programmes.1 It was also shown that hamstring injuries kept increasing over the last 13 years.2 Taken together, those two papers may suggest that the majority of elite club practitioners likely disregard research findings1 and may therefore be the one to be blamed for those increased injury rates.2

Making supporting staff and coaches responsible for those injuries is easy, especially when considering their perceived typical personality traits (ie, so-called type 2,4 high egos and little open-mindedness and willingness to learn—‘why could they be bothered applying the new study findings?’). While this may be true sometimes, the reality is that …