Interview: Canada’s ‘return to play’ specialist getting injured stars to the World Cup

The biggest stars on the planet will soon descend on North America for the 2026 World Cup. After a grueling domestic schedule and with a raft of injuries to key players, national teams have little over two weeks to prepare their squads to compete for soccer’s greatest prize.

Fortunately, for most nations those preparations began a long time ago. National teams are no longer kept in the dark about player fitness and injury concerns. Instead, a year-round process of monitoring, information-sharing and carefully-tuned workload management helps to ensure that players arrive in the best possible condition.

As Canada prepares to host a World Cup for the very first time, the team’s Return to Play Specialist Ryan Leaver will be working overtime to guide injured players back to full fitness. Leaver is preparing for his third World Cup (men’s 2022, women’s 2023) and knows only too well that international tournaments bring long hours and intense demands for all involved.

At the moment, the headline injury news for Canada revolves around Bayern Munich star and national team captain Alphonso Davies. The 25-year-old suffered a hamstring injury while playing for Bayern and Leaver will be hoping to get him back to match fitness ahead of the World Cup. It’s a daunting task with a nation’s hopes on the line, but Leaver tells AS USA that it is a challenge he relishes.

“Some people don’t like this part, the ‘return to play’, because you’ve got a bit of risk on it. You’ve got to stick your neck out on things. I try to keep it as mathematical as possible and it’s served me well so far but, you know, it’s not always perfect.”

Club and country working as one

At the heart of the effort is a constant back-and-forth between club and country, with information shared and regular conversations held to advise on player preparation and recovery. Gone are the days of players turning up for international duty out of shape or nursing unknown injuries; now, there is complete year-round dialogue to ensure that all parties have the fullest possible picture of each player’s physical condition.

Leaver explains that the Canada staff maintains GPS and load statistics for each player on the roster, covering every team practice, workout session and game. They share that data with the players’ clubs, and get the same back in return. It requires careful coordination but is vital to ensuring that the monitoring process continues throughout the whole year, regardless of which jersey the player is wearing.

“Every time we hand off the athlete we hand all the load numbers with them so it’s a continuous graph. Because if you had dips in the graph for 12 days [of an international break] it actually screws up some of your workload ratios that you’re trying to keep track of,” Leaver explained. “You would have to wait almost a month to get back onto your ratios so it’s the interest of both of us to share those numbers with each other.”

The workload ratios are a key focus for Leaver, and for others in his position. Top players are playing more games than ever before, often with more intense and more physically demanding styles, so they are being pushed to the ‘red zone’ with regularity.

High-tech monitoring equipment is used to accurately evaluate player condition but the most effective injury prevention method is actually the simplest: sleep. One of Leaver’s colleagues at the Canada Soccer Federation literally wrote the book on its impact on sporting performance and players’ sleep at the Qatar World Cup was meticulously tracked used apps.

“We have massage therapists, we have ice baths, lymphatic drainage boots... We have every doodad and every sort of invention for recovery on offer to the athletes, but sleep is number one.”

“It is the cheapest and easiest thing to get, but at times it’s hard in a professional schedule. An athlete post-game might need ten hours of sleep, or at least a solid eight at the minimum. But sometimes you’ve got to get up, train, go to the airport and travel somewhere else, so schedule can be a big demand.”

Players feeling the strain

With little over two weeks to go until the start of the 2026 World Cup, the injuries to key stars are piling up. Davies is not the only one facing a race against time; the likes of Lamine Yamal, Mohamed Salah and Eder Militão are all rushing back from soft tissue injuries suffered in recent months. Hugo Ekitike, Rodrygo Goes, Xavi Simons and Serge Gnabry have all been ruled out with similar issues. The increased workload on players, Leaver says, is contributing to Canada’s injury issues.

“You’ve seen the headlines lately, it’s not the best for us. We’ve had a few big soft tissue injuries which we hate to see. We try to mitigate but it is football, people do get injured at the end of the season after the huge fixture loads. There’s going to be soft tissue injuries but I have a lot of work to do with our medical staff, our fitness staff and our coaching staff to get these players ready.”

At this time of year, balancing the demands between club and country is a near-impossible task. For most top players in the major European leagues, this month has been the crescendo of a long domestic season, with the Champions League final still to come for Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain. Those involved in club soccer’s biggest game will have barely a week to prepare for the start of the World Cup, but there is an acceptance that they take precedent for now.

“It’s really hard for us to tell a club what to do in the cup finals, this is the biggest part of the club season,” Leaver admits. “But a mid-table game that doesn’t mean a whole lot? I hate to see an athlete injured in one of those games, but to the club it’s still important.”

“It’s still their season, they’ve paid for this athlete to play. We have opinions and we’d like to suggest but that’s definitely not the medical team’s job, I think it’s more that [the two] coaching staffs might say to each other: ‘Hey, is this game really worth it?’"

Ready for the World Cup stage

Medical teams will aim to do as much of the prep work as possible beforehand, making plans for every possible eventuality. In the case of Alphonso Davies, he remained with Bayern Munich for the remainder of the German domestic season but Leaver has ensured that his team are ready to take charge of the Canadian captain at a moment’s notice.

“I have all his numbers and I’m getting all the plans and scenarios ready. So if they ask me, I can say, ‘Here’s where he stands mathematically and here’s where we need to go’. And that starts to help us project when, or if, he’s going to play next."

“You want to get all your bases covered. So when you go in - it’s not quite plug and play - but you have your scenarios. I have spreadsheets for each player and for when he arrives and then when he comes in, I’m ready. And then I can give it to the rest of the medical staff, like ‘Here’s the plan.’"

Even after months of monitoring and hours of conversations between club and country, the work truly steps up a level when players are released to the national team. For Leaver, tournaments are a grueling affair with practically no downtime and high stakes throughout. After Qatar he barely left the sofa for three days and this summer’s extended World Cup, with the potential for greater travel, will be particularly demanding.

Canada will not announce their final World Cup squad until May 29, meaning that he still has a few days to prepare for the flood of arrivals to the team’s pre-tournament camp. Once the World Cup begins, Leaver and every other member of team staff will need to be at the top of their game, knowing that a player’s World Cup dreams may depend on their judgement.

But despite the pressure Leaver has positive memories from previous tournament outings. He has been with Canada during a time of incredible growth in the program, from rank outsiders to a genuine force in CONCACAF. He has seen his nation take on world champions Argentina at the 2024 Copa América, and go up against France and the Netherlands in recent years. He even managed to snag Luka Modric’s third jersey after a World Cup meeting with Croatia, a memento that now hangs proudly on his son’s bedroom wall.

Overseeing a talented generation of Canadian players for a first-ever home World Cup, the stakes will be even higher for Leaver this summer. His may not be the most glamorous role at soccer’s great global gathering but, increasingly, it might be one of the most important.

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