Women’s schedule must change for player safety – Miedema

Vivianne Miedema, a forward for Manchester City, has criticized the women’s football schedule and demanded that the calendar’s administrators put a premium on “players’ physical and mental safety.”

The 28-year-old is recovering from a hamstring injury that could have ended his season while he was playing for the Netherlands on international duty at the beginning of April.

In her final two seasons at Arsenal, she only made eight Women’s Super League (WSL) appearances after torn her left knee in December 2022, while earlier this season she was sidelined for more than three months with a knee injury.

Miedema wrote on Instagram, “It took me a few days to recover from being injured once more and to find the motivation to begin rehab.”

I’ve been extremely impatient and want things to move more quickly, but maybe that’s because I finally felt like myself again and enjoyed playing on the field despite the pressure of games.

Manchester City’s recent schedule has gotten them busy, playing eight games in 29 days over the course of March in four different competitions.

After playing for the national team for four days, she injured herself during the Netherlands’ Women’s Nations League game against Austria on April 8th.

Manager Nick Cushing’s side has nine first-team players injured, including Miedema, or have only recently returned to training after lengthy absences.

However, Manchester City is not the only city concerned with the schedule and player safety.

In order to accelerate research into reducing ACL injuries in women’s football, the players’ union Fifpro and the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) collaborated with Leeds Beckett University in April 2024.

Women’s football has two to six times more of ACL injuries than men, and about two-thirds of them occur when there is no physical contact. However, it is unclear how to cut down on their frequency in the professional game.

Meanwhile, Fifpro and other top European leagues filed a lawsuit against world champion Fifa last July over its “abuse of dominance” in the game.