Detraining in footballers

With the FIFA World Cup 2014 around the corner, the national players are still in training and competition mode and all players will compete in at least three games (however, everyone is hoping for seven).

However, this post is not about these players, its about the other players that are not present in the World Cup, enjoy their vacation and most likely do not train (at all, or at least have reduced their training).  The question here arise how the players react to a reduced training load or no training load at all? Of course I do not necessarily meant to talk about the injured players.

In the scientific literature, the partial or complete loss of training-induced adaptation, in response to an insufficient training stimulus (17 - see references below) is called detraining (and here it seems obvious that injuries can also be seen as a kind of detraining as well). Detraining is a common phenomenon in sports (also basketball (3)) and the term “use it or loose it” seems to be proven right.