Two historic goals in the men’s FIFA World Cup tell the story of a radical transformation of football and the bodies of its elite athletes.
In 30 tense and spectacular seconds at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, the Brazilian team worked the ball with eight players, until the powerful shot on goal by captain and right-back Carlos Alberto Torres (1944-2016).
The team’s fourth goal against Italy in the 1970 final is considered one of the greatest moments in World Cup history.
Five decades later, a similar seven-pass maneuver by Argentina against France, in the 2022 final (converted into a goal by right winger Ángel Di Maria), took just 12 seconds.
The 1970 goal “would not have happened today”, explains professor Orlando Laitano, from the University of Florida, in the United States. He is a leading expert in exercise physiology.
If that Brazilian team could travel through time, their play would probably be intercepted by modern opponents. And “the biggest imbalance would not be talent, but physiology”, according to Laitano.
‘A battle for every inch’
Laitano worked with the Brazilian team during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. He claims that modern football players are biologically different from their predecessors.
The professor explains that the evolution of exercises, medicine and the way games are played have meant that elite football has become a battle for every inch of space on the playing field.
“That’s why modern players need to be faster and stronger,” according to him.
Data from the last five decades shows that top players have become taller and thinner, according to researchers at the University of Wolverhampton, in the United Kingdom.
They compared information from thousands of players from the main football division in England, between the 1970s and 2020 (the First Division until 1992 and the Premiere League in the following years, which currently brings together a large number of elite players from around the world).
The average height of players increased by more than 4 cm between 1973 and 2013. This trend continued in the following decade among goalkeepers and defenders, but the average height of midfielders and forwards suffered a small reduction.
The researchers also concluded that players in the English top flight “are becoming more angular and ectomorphic”. This means that they tend to be increasingly taller and thinner, with a light frame and long limbs.
This trend is indicated by the increase in evaluations in a measure known as the Reciprocal Weight Index (RIP), which measures height in relation to weight, in order to highlight thinness.
The study authors indicate that the changes in body type are due to better fields and the increased workload required of current players.
In the 1970s, English pitches were often very muddy in the middle of winter “and players needed to be very muscular to play well”, according to Professor Emeritus Alan Nevill, one of the study’s authors.
But now the fields are better and “you have these lighter, leaner players who can maintain their performance for longer periods while preserving energy.”
Experts also claim that players consume much of this energy to run.
Running (much more) to win
Several studies calculate that players rarely broke the 30 km/h barrier in the 1970s and 1980s. But, at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, at least 10 of them ran at more than 35 km/h.
More than that, players now need to reach their maximum speed on more occasions during each match.
“If you look at the attackers of the last century, they could walk most of the game and explode in just a few moves to, perhaps, score a goal. That doesn’t exist anymore,” explains exercise physiology professor Jens Bangsbo, from the University of Copenhagen, in Denmark.
In the last men’s European Championship, held in 2024 in Germany, players ran at 25 km/h or more around 12 times per game, according to UEFA, the body that governs football in Europe.
But the number of sprints depends on the position. Central defenders and midfielders ran at full speed on average eight times per match, while forwards did the same 12 times and full-backs 14.
Running fast is one thing, according to Bangsbo, but the most important thing is the ability to run again and again.
“Basically, football today is about recovery, the ability to recover as quickly as possible.” Bangsbo is a former professional football player and one of the greatest experts in football physiology and fitness in the world.
The acceleration of the game, particularly in the last decade, has been caused, in large part, by the increased use of high-pressing tactics — quick, coordinated attempts to take possession of the ball from the opposing team’s defenders before they can pass forward.
But the interesting thing is that the game did not see large increases in the distances covered by players.
Studies indicate that, in the 1970s, players walked or ran, on average, 8.7 km per game. This number peaked at 11.4 km in the 1990s but has since fallen.
At the 2022 World Cup, players covered an average distance of 10.6 km per game, according to FIFA. But this distance varied between different positions.
Are players playing too much?
The data also indicates that high-level football players are playing more frequently.
Studies have shown that the number of matches played by most clubs around the world is stable, at around 42 per year. But the overload can be much greater for elite athletes.
Liverpool’s Dutch defender Virgil van Dijk, for example, has already played 65 games this season. Of these, 10 were for the national team, before the World Cup, according to data published by the international football players’ union, Fifpro.
The entity declared that players have never been so demanding and called for greater protections in relation to rest and recovery time.
“The number of matches played is certainly an issue related to the risk of injuries,” according to Bangsbo.
A study commissioned by UEFA and published in 2023 demonstrated what the organization describes as a “worrying” increase in hamstring injuries over the previous eight seasons.
The study did not determine the cause, but its authors suggested possible factors, such as the increased intensity of elite football and the overload of match schedules.
“Currently, players work at their limit,” explains Laitano. “Without adequate recovery time, the body collapses.”
Veterans on the Rise
But there is also good news. Advances in sports science, including training, nutrition and recovery regimes, make it possible for football players to remain elite for longer.
One example is the average age of the UEFA Champions League, the most important club tournament in the world, which increased from 24.9 years in 1992 to 26.5 in 2018.
The last three World Cups were the “oldest” in history, according to FIFA.
The 2018 World Cup in Russia recorded the highest average age of players in the tournament’s history: 27.9 years old.
Only seven players aged 35 or over participated in the 1990 World Cup in Italy. But 41 were in the 2022 tournament, according to data compiled by economist and data scientist Joshua C. Fjetstul of the University of Oslo in Norway.
This year, FIFA’s official list includes 72 players aged 35 or over. And eight of them are at least 40 years old, more than all previous World Cups combined.
“Players who take care of themselves and follow the correct training and recovery protocols are much more likely to play at the elite level for longer than before”, concludes Orlando Laitano.
Graphics by Caroline Souza and Daniel Arce-Lopez, from the BBC Visual Journalism team.
This text was originally published here.
