COVID-positive players cost Premier League clubs more than £9million in wages last season, The Mail on Sunday can reveal — and that was just the direct cost of players off work in 2020-21.
Seventy first-team footballers were sidelined after positive tests in the Premier League, at an average of £128,822 per player.
Taking into account players who returned a positive test in the stop-start 2019-20 campaign and those affected this season and the total costs will be close to £20m.
The Mail on Sunday revealed COVID-positive players cost clubs more than £9m last season
The data is drawn from an extensive report into injuries and illness in Europe’s ‘Big Five’ top divisions last season, to be published this week.
Most of the financial costs of the restrictions for football have been well documented, from lost gate revenues to rebated TV deals. But until now the economic costs arising from player sickness have largely been overlooked.
The new analysis comes in a report called ‘Feeling The Strain: 2021 European Football Injury Index’, compiled by international insurance brokers, Howden, and illustrates in forensic detail the cost of failed Covid tests in first-team players in Europe’s ‘Big Five’ leagues.
In 2020-21 there were 494 failed Covid tests for players across the top divisions of England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France.Â
A total of 71 Premier League footballers were sidelined after a positive test in a COVID-hit year
On top of the 70 in the Premier League, there were 73 in the Bundesliga, 83 in La Liga, 97 in Ligue 1 and 171 in Serie A, where more than one in three players failed a test and were paid £17m collectively while unable to play.
The average absence was 13 days in Spain, 14 days in the Premier League and Serie A, 15 days in France and 17 days in Germany.
The total cost in basic wages paid to players in the ‘Big Five’ sidelined due to a failed test was more than £42m. The 494 failed tests accounted for more than one in 10 of all 3,988 ‘injuries’ logged in the ‘Big Five’ divisions, and accounted for more than 10 per cent of the £415m cost of all injuries and illness.
The Premier League saw more injuries than any of the other top divisions, with 938, set against 902 in the Bundesliga, 781 in Serie A, 761 in La Liga and 606 in Ligue 1.Â
The data comes from an upcoming report into injuries and illness in Europe’s ‘Big 5’ divisions
It seems likely that the Premier League’s uniquely packed schedule of so many different time slots in 2020-21, so all games were shown live on TV, probably contributed to a surge in muscle and soft tissue injuries.
The decision by France’s Ligue 1 to annul the end of the 2019-20 season and therefore not pack in a restart before moving on to 2020-21, probably led to fewer injuries in the latter.
Some of Europe’s biggest clubs suffered most with general injuries, with Manchester United’s 79 the most in the Premier League, PSG’s 78 the most in Ligue 1, Bayern Munich’s 76 the most in the Bundesliga, Real Madrid’s 68 the most in La Liga and Juventus’s 61 the most in Serie A.
The report’s authors note that all those clubs, aside from Bayern, were beaten to their domestic league titles by clubs with far fewer injuries.
England’s largest injury bill in cash terms was at Liverpool, who paid £13.5m to sidelined stars
Premier League winners Manchester City had 26 fewer injuries than rivals United, for example, while La Liga champions Atletico had 26 fewer than Real Madrid.Â
French champions Lille had just 26 injuries all season against PSG’s 78, while Inter Milan won Serie A with 13 fewer injuries than Juventus. PSG, Bayern, Real Madrid and Juventus paid out the most in wages to sidelined players in their countries as well as having most injuries.
England’s largest injury bill in cash terms was at Liverpool, who paid £13.5m to sidelined stars, topping Manchester United’s £11m in second.
Howden’s 162-page report also breaks down last season’s injuries by type (muscle, hamstring, knee and so on), by age and by player position for each league, analysing the cost of each on average, the time sidelined and the amount of players on average missing from each team per match day.Â
