The Premier League’s toughest ACL setbacks — five injuries that changed careers
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Credit: IMAGO and Sky Sports.
Michael Mongie
Wed 24 September 2025 17:49, UK
The modern game has seen a rise in ACL injuries to footballers, largely due to the amount of games they’re expected to play these days.
Ligament injuries have become more common than ever before with Liverpool’s Giovanni Leoni the most recent player to fall victim to an ACL injury.
Due to the severity of an ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injury, the defender will be sidelined for the best part of a year, and he isn’t the only one to experience the debilitating setback…
During the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, England faced Sweden in a group stage clash but after just 51 seconds of taking to the field, Michael Owen badly twisted his right knee.
Post-match diagnosis confirmed that the 2001 Ballon d’Or winner had ruptured his ACL and would undergo surgery to correct the severe damage.
The injury only say Owen return to action 309 days later, missing a total of 72 games for Newcastle United and the England national team.
It’s an injury that seriously derailed one of the most promising careers of all time and led to further problems, which saw Owen go into early retirement in 2013.
After his ACL tear and subsequent surgery, Owen underwent cartilage surgery to repair damage caused by cartilage work that led to the ACL injury in the first place.
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In 2018, Owen admitted to being terrified of overexerting himself for risk of further injury.
All in all, he missed 316 days and 41 games.
It effectively brought an end to his ability to operate at the highest level and he never returned to the heights he was hitting before the injury.
Reflecting towards the backend of his recovery, Chambers said: “It’s never a good time to get this injury but unfortunately it fell at a bad time for me.
This required multiple surgeries in one go and saw him brutally miss out on the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.
Although he was expected to miss a full year of football, he returned after 317 days and missed a total of 58 games for Liverpool and England.
It was a brutal blow for Oxlade-Chamberlain at a time when he was beginning to become an automatic starter in Jurgen Klopp‘s side.
In February 2025, Lisandro Martinez suffered an ACL rupture following a challenge with Crystal Palace star Ismaila Sarr and was stretchered off the pitch.
The injury caused him to miss the rest of the 2024-25 season and the start of the current campaign.
In February 2024, the Argentine also injured his MCL and missed several weeks, meaning this is an issue that Martinez and Manchester United need to deal with utmost caution.
At the time of writing, Martinez has missed 43 games and 333 days due to his ACL injury but he is on the comeback trail.
In fact, he’s one of two players on the list actively still returning from an ACL tear with Manchester United greatly in need of his talent.
Martinez shared an update showing him training on grass at Manchester United’s AON Training Complex as he targets a return to action this season.
In March 2004, Jamaal Lascelles suffered what is now officially the longest ACL injury in Premier League history when he suffered a total rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament during a 4-3 victory for Newcastle United over West Ham.
He, too, underwent surgery but although he was expected to return in nine months, he was out for over a year, missing 407 days and 55 games for club and country.