The run back hurts more than the run forward

Recovery sprints get praised as effort, but the damage is done in the braking, and nobody keeps a column for that.

Watch a full back chase a counter for sixty metres and everyone talks about the sprint. The sprint is the cheap part. The expensive part happens in the last eight metres, when he has to stop being a sprinter and become a defender, dropping his hips, planting, absorbing his own momentum through one leg while still trying to face the ball.

That braking is eccentric work. The muscle is lengthening under load rather than shortening, which is where the microscopic damage lives, which is why players are sore two days after a game full of transitions and merely tired after a game full of possession. A team that played fifty passes in its own half has run a lot. A team that lost the ball nine times in dangerous areas has been punished, and the punishment shows up on Monday.

Tracking systems count high-speed distance because it is easy to count. Decelerations above a threshold get logged too, but the threshold is a blunt instrument and the number rarely leaves the sports science office. I have never once heard a commentator say a midfielder produced twenty-two hard decelerations. I have heard endless nonsense about total distance covered, which is the least informative figure in the sport and survives because it is a big round number that fits on a graphic.

Here is the position I will defend. Recovery runs should be coached as braking problems, not as effort problems. The player who arrives at speed and cannot change direction has wasted the run and often made things worse, because he takes himself past the ball and leaves the cutback open. The player who arrives at eighty per cent, balanced, on the inside shoulder, has done the job. Arriving late and under control beats arriving early and out of control almost every time.

That has a training consequence people avoid because it is unglamorous. If your defenders are going to brake violently forty times a match, they need to have braked violently in training, repeatedly, in a planned way, so the tissue is used to it. Most clubs are more comfortable adding sprints than adding stops.

And it has a selection consequence. Some players are simply better at stopping than others, and it is not the same trait as being fast.

We scout the acceleration. We inherit the deceleration.