When is there a strike?: The enormous overload in football

The Premier League traditionally continued, just like the Italian Serie A. In Spain the players were given a break of about ten days, in the Bundesliga it will have been about three weeks next weekend when the whistle blows again.

Supercups in Saudi Arabia

It’s clear to me: the breaks are too short and there are too many games. Numerous players already have almost 30 games to their name this season – including international matches. In January. There are also a number of trips to away matches, sometimes even to other continents. The most recent example is the Spanish top teams Real, Atlético and Barcelona. On January 3 they had to play in the Spanish Cup and three days later in the championship. And the Super Cup is coming on Wednesday. But not in Spain, but in Saudi Arabia, 4,800 km away.

So we head into the desert to determine the winner of the minor Super Cup in two matches (from the semi-finals), to return to action a week later in the championship in Spain. The same happens with the Italians, who also hold their Super Cup in the desert. While the health of the players suffers, the coffers of the associations are ringing: the Saudis are said to donate around 40 million euros per event.

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The players also visibly groan under the many matches: “There are too many matches, there are too many injuries. We are moving in a rhythm that is becoming more and more dangerous,” Barça defender Jules Kounde (25) said last November about the packed schedule.

FIFA’s most important Club World Cup

Unlike before, the pace becomes faster and the game becomes more intense. And yet there are more and more games. This can’t last much longer. Especially because it will get worse in the future. FIFA recently presented its plans for a major Club World Cup with 32 participating teams. The tournament will take place every four years in the summer from 2025.

So even in these years when there is no World Cup or European Championship, there is no break for the players, but a new tournament. The UEFA Nations League, introduced in 2018, would once again be a competition that fills the calendar every two years. Not to forget that hardly after these tournaments are over, the club starts preparing for the season again and plays in Asia or the US for marketing reasons. But that’s not all: due to the upcoming reform, more matches will take place in the Champions League from next season. The only winners of this delusions of grandeur are the associations and their officials.

Are the players on strike?

I keep thinking to myself, won’t the players get tired of it at some point? What if they go on strike one day? Because ultimately they decide whether they want to be on the field. However, without their initiative, little change will occur in the near future.

Players’ union Fifpro sounded the alarm as early as 2022 and warned of an alarming loss of strength in professional football as a result of the overcrowded competition calendar. At the time, 1,055 football players were interviewed, of whom 54 percent indicated that they had already suffered an injury due to overuse.

Does the level also suffer from this?

I don’t think fewer games would necessarily hurt from a fan perspective. Because a special match like the infamous El Clásico between Barcelona and Real Madrid loses a bit of its luster and meaning if a clash takes place outside the championship in the summer preparation in the US and at the Super Cup in Saudi Arabia.

In addition, the level could increasingly suffer from the many games; after all, the players are not machines or robots. For emotionally charged, high-quality matches, I would also accept one or two football-free evenings. Sometimes less is more.

A look abroad shows how things can be done differently. In the NFL, the best American football league in the world, a season only lasts from September to February; the rest of the year the pros are on break. Almost every one of the season’s seventeen games is important and feels special. Of course, the sport is much more physically intense and such a mode would not be possible in European football. Nevertheless, the competition reinforces my ‘less is more’ theory.