Fitness issues are part of the game but severe injuries are becoming more and more common. Football’s jam-packed schedule hasn’t helped and it’s putting huge strain on players. It can be a long way back for stars who suffer the most serious blows.
Just ask James Maddison, who said he dealt with “dark days” after an ACL blow last year, before making his first start in 536 days against Coventry.
And his Tottenham team-mate Dejan Kulusevski also made his return in the game, playing for the first time in 526 days. But there have been some players who have been handed even worse injury set-backs that have kept them sidelined for incredibly long periods. SunSport has taken a look through football’s worst injury lay-offs.
Gerard Deulofeu – 1,300 days (and counting)
Topping a list that no one wants to be part of, you have to feel for former Watford and Everton star Deulofeu.
The Barcelona academy star has been plagued with a severe knee injury and hasn’t played since turning out for Udinese in January 2023. Three-and-a-half years later he is still no closer to returning to football and is now without a club. In an interview with the BBC at the start of the year, he said he was praying for a “miracle” after “losing all my personal life” while trying to get back to full fitness.
He had already spent a period out of the game with an ACL injury in 2022 before suffering another set-back with his knee during a substitute appearance against Sampdoria.
Phil Jones – 708 days
The ex-Manchester United star’s battle with chronic injuries are well documented after spending almost two years out of the game due to knee issues.
Jones – who left Old Trafford in May 2023 before retiring from football a year later – managed 229 appearances for United across 12 seasons.
That small figure for the time he was there speaks volumes and he only played five times in his final three seasons.
Jones had as many as 14 surgeries during his career and missed a total of 228 games. He previously admitted he was “embarrassed” and “ashamed” about his constant injuries. Jones told the BBC: “It got so bad for a while that I would be walking down the street, worried about what people would say to me in case I got abuse, and thinking about what I’d say next.”
Adam Forshaw – 700 days
The Blackburn Rovers star played no football whatsoever between September 2019 and August 2021 after dealing with a niggling hip injury.
He aggravated the join between his hip and groin when he was playing for Leeds United in the 2019-20 pre-season but pushed through the pain.
Then the issue got worse during a Championship match against Charlton on September 28, 2019.
Forshaw missed the rest of the campaign and didn’t feature at all in 2020-21.
His long-awaited return came in a Carabao Cup game against Crewe Alexandra in August 24, 2021.
While Forshaw managed to resume his career and go on to play for Norwich, Plymouth and Blackburn, the hip injury has resurfaced. This month it was decided Forshaw will go under the knife and will be out once again for a long period of time.
Santi Cazorla – 668 days
Arsenal fans will have fond memories of the Spanish midfielder – but they’ll also remember how injury-prone he was.
The Spaniard played 180 times for the Gunners across six seasons – but he managed just 11 outings in the final two seasons. Cazorla mainly struggled with knee, ankle and Achilles problems during his time at the Emirates.
He previously told the Guardian that his surgeon mentioned him in a case study because he had “never seen such an extreme case” of injuries.
Cazorla even contemplated retiring during his lengthy spell out of the game.
His issues started during a friendly for Spain against Chile in September 2013, when he picked up a knock before cracking a bone in his ankle in November 2015 and he struggled to recover.
An infection he picked up during surgery was serious enough that amputation could have been needed.
He did manage to prolong his career after recovering and went on to play for Villarreal, Al-Sadd in Qatar and Oviedo – starring all the way up until last season in La Liga.
Owen Hargreaves – 588 days
Who could forget Hargreaves’ chronicled battles with injury – and those videos he put out of him working on a treadmill to prove his fitness to clubs.
The ex-Man United and Bayern Munich star was plagued with a series of issues from 2007 onwards that blighted his career. He joined Old Trafford after the 2006 World Cup following his recovery from a broken leg before fighting with niggling knee problems that required surgery.
Hargreaves played just 39 times for United over four seasons and admitted he was “never the same” after going under the knife and having a number of injections.
He told Four Four Two: “I wish I’d known more about tendons earlier in my career, as I could have avoided so much pain and heartache had I looked after my body a bit more carefully.
“But I so desperately wanted to play football. I never realised just how dangerous my injury had been.”
He finished his career with a brief stint at Manchester City but only played four times for the club before retiring in 2012.
Dejan Kulusevski – 526 days
The Sweden star’s iniial blow against Crystal Palace on May 11, 2025 seemed to be fairly routine after ex-Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou infamously dismissed it as a “knock”. But what followed was one of the most torturous rehabs in recent Prem history. It was discovered Kulusevski had actually suffered a serious patella cartilage fracture and needed two surgeries to fix the issue. This particular knee issue is incredibly rare among stars in the game.
Former Spurs boss Thomas Frank claimed it was a “complicated injury, one we haven’t seen that much in football history”.
Kulusevski was out for such a long time that he never played a game under Frank before his sacking and he instead made his comeback under Roberto De Zerbi against Coventry on Monday night.
Neymar – 370 days
Injuries have become a much bigger theme for the Brazilian towards the end of his career. The ex-Barcelona superstar ruptured his ACL while playing for Brazil against Uruguay in October 2023 and he would go on to miss 60 games.
That included 23 consecutive games for Brazil and it wasn’t until the 2026 World Cup that he finally played for his national team again. That ACL blow came at a time when he had just signed for Saudi outfit Al-Hilal and it massively limited his minutes in the Middle East. Neymar only played seven games for Al-Hilal over the course of two seasons, scoring once, despite the club shelling out around £75m.
He left the club in 2025 and his old side Santos took a chance on him as a free agent. But his injury problems haven’t gone away after a muscle tear threatened to keep him out of the World Cup entirely as he missed most of the group stage.
He has managed to finally get a run of games together for Santos but a new muscular blow in September kept him out for another month.
Ultimately, Neymar’s injury prone nature is what has separated him from the top tier of football greatness in his bid to become one of the world’s best players.
Eduardo – 358 days
The moment when Croatian forward Eduardo broke his leg against Birmingham City in February 2008 was one of the most shocking in Prem history.
It’s without a doubt one of the worst injuries we’ve seen in the top flight after Martin Taylor went studs up on Eduardo, leaving him with a fractured tibia and dislocated ankle. Eduardo missed nearly a year of action, which included 51 competitive matches for Arsenal. In truth, he was never really the same player following his return to the pitch and he was later sold to Shakhtar just a year after recovering.
He was able to enjoy a full career after spells in Brazil and Poland as he played up until the 2018-19 season – retiring aged 35.
Virgil van Dijk – 285 days
The Liverpool centre-back was faced with a testing lay-off in October 2020, when a shocking challenge from Jordan Pickford in the Merseyside Derby left him with an ACL tear.
He was forced out of 57 games for the Reds after undergoing surgery.
And he wasn’t back until 14 August, 2021 when he played in Liverpool’s opening day win over Norwich City.
After playing just eight times in the 2020-21 season, he has managed to stay relatively injury free in the following years. He featured 51 times the following campaign and has been a consistent presence in the team. In fact, he has missed just three Premier League games in the last three seasons at Anfield.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic – 280 days
Luckily for the towering Swede, his worst injury set-back came right at the end of his career. The former Manchester United and Barcelona striker was playing for AC Milan in 2022 when he suffered a knee issue and needed reconstructive surgery.
Ibrahimovic later revealed he had played for six months without an ACL as he chose to put off surgery to help Milan win their first Serie A title in 11 years.
After taking a series of gruelling injections, he finally decided to have the procedure in May 2022.
He was ruled out for eight months before returning to action in February 2023. Zlatan posted an emotional statement claiming he had “barely slept because of the pain” before the op and “never suffered so much on and off the pitch”- Sun.
