Posted Sep 29, 2022, 7:00 PM
Injured players are not just a handicap for the competitiveness of a club. They are also a financial burden. According to a report by British insurance broker Howden, teams from Europe’s top five leagues paid out more than €600m for unavailable players during the 2021/2022 season.
In detail, the 98 clubs in the Premier League (England), Liga (Spain), Serie A (Italy), Ligue 1 (France) and Bundesliga (Germany) recorded 4,810 injuries in their ranks, a figure up 20%. compared to the 2020/2021 season. The cumulative salaries of the players concerned meanwhile reached 610.75 million euros, 29% higher than that of the previous season.
Howden bases his calculation on the daily cost of each player, with wage information provided by Sporting Intelligence. This figure is related to the number of days of unavailability, any injury being counted from one day of absence.
Of the five major European leagues, the Premier League has had the highest number of injuries. The report counts 1,231, at a cost of 220 million euros. The English elite is slightly ahead of the German Bundesliga, whose 18 clubs have had to deal with 1,205 injuries, corresponding to 82.8 million euros in salary. The Spanish La Liga comes second in terms of the amount paid to the injured, with a total of 130 million euros.
PSG and its stars in the lead
If the French Ligue 1 has been less affected – with 691 injuries and a cost of 80.4 million euros – Paris-Saint-Germain tops the European clubs having paid the most for the unavailability of its players. According to Howden’s estimates, the capital club paid 40.7 million euros for injuries last season.
This result is mainly due to the high salaries paid by PSG to its stars. With a gross remuneration of more than 130,000 euros per day, the Brazilian Neymar would have been paid more than 10 million euros for his more than 70 cumulative days of unavailability. Argentinian Lionel Messi would have been paid around 5.8 million euros for around 50 days of absence, barely more than Spanish defender Sergio Ramos, unavailable for more than 200 days.
The reigning French champions are ahead of Real Madrid, which recorded the most injuries in Europe during the season (114) and paid 40.4 million euros to their unavailable. FC Barcelona comes third, with 33.2 million euros paid for 80 injuries.
More than 50 million euros in absences linked to Covid
Howden has also calculated the cost of the Covid-19 pandemic for Europe’s elite clubs, with each case involving an absence of at least seven days for affected players. The bill for the five major championships thus reached 53.5 million euros, including 19 million for the Premier League (181 cases) and 12 for the Bundesliga (219 cases). Ligue 1 is once again the most spared championship, with 78 cases and absences corresponding to 6.1 million euros in wages.
The British firm notes that the rise in the number of injuries comes against a backdrop of an increase in the number of games during the season. This is particularly linked to the creation of new international competitions such as the League of Nations or the increase in the number of participants in existing competitions. From the 2026 edition, the final phase of the World Cup will thus increase from 32 to 48 teams.
While players’ associations are already warning about the consequences of this growth, Howden “raises the question of whether the costs of injuries are not becoming unsustainable”.
