Hamstring injuries are increasing in men’s professional football: every cloud has a silver lining?

Ekstrand et al recently showed that since 2001 hamstring injuries have increased by 4% annually in men’s professional football.1 A reason could be that evidence-based preventive measures are only partially implemented at the elite level,2 despite that they have been proven to be effective in the reduction of hamstring injuries in football in professional and amateur Danish footballers.3 However, while the rate of hamstring injuries increased during training sessions (4%/year), there was not a significant increase of these injuries during matches.1 The authors speculate that this may be due to the fact that the training sessions are more intense with the aim to better prepare the players to the match. They also hypothesise that this new training approach may be protective during matches and therefore the hamstring injury rate during match play has not …