More games, fewer breaks: footballers from top clubs are exposed to increasing stress. As a result, many regular staff at the DFB are currently unavailable. Players and coaches are sounding the alarm.
The season in the top international leagues is not yet old, but some professionals are already struggling or injured. Ter Stegen, Havertz, Musiala, Füllkrug, Koch, Raum, Henrichs – the list of players who will not be available to Julian Nagelsmann for the upcoming Nations League games grew longer and longer as the week went on.
This is not normal at this point in the season. The series of injuries shows that the tight schedules in professional football place physical strain on the players. At the European Championships in the summer, the standard of the games also suffered noticeably. The star-studded English team, who had to admit defeat to Spain in the final, managed to get through the preliminary round with just two goals and one win. It wasn’t good football.
Rodri is the tragic figure among the critics
The topic of stress in professional football is an old story. As early as 2019, the players’ union Fifpro, of which more than 65,000 professionals are members, published an open letter entitled “At The Limit: Player Workload in Elite Professional Men’s Football”, in which many international stars, including the Premier League, had their say -Coaching legends Jürgen Klopp, then Liverpool FC, and Pep Guardiola, Manchester City.
One of Guardiola’s players is now causing the debate to flare up again: the Spanish European champion Rodri. The 28-year-old even brought up a players’ strike. “I think we’re close to it,” he said in response to a journalist’s question at a press conference. “You can ask any player you want, they will say the same thing.”
The bitter irony of fate: Last Sunday, Rodi seriously injured his knee in the top game between Manchester City and Arsenal FC (2:2). Diagnosis: cruciate ligament tear. The midfield director will probably be out for the rest of the young season. This is a bitter setback for Guardiola and his team.
National players are struggling
Voices are also becoming louder in the Bundesliga calling for the game plans to be adjusted. “I noticed that there was a lot of talk about it because more and more is being added. And I can only agree with that,” Jonathan Tah told the German Press Agency. He loves playing at a high level. “But it still has to be narrowed down at some point,” said the German international.
Tah has been competing in the Champions League with Bayer Leverkusen since this season. The premier class started in September with a new mode and increased from 32 to 36 clubs. This means that each club has two more games. If you don’t make it directly to the round of 16, there will be four in the following playoffs. Given the many competitions, which include the Club World Cup for the first time this summer, players from top clubs could play up to 80 games in a season. There are even more for national players.
For the Bundesliga, FC Bayern and Borussia Dortmund are taking part in the Club World Cup. “When players start talking about strikes, you know it’s five to twelve,” emphasized BVB coach Nuri Şahin at a recent press conference. Bayern coach Vincent Kompany agreed: “When you play 70, 75, 80 games a year, there comes a point where it’s no longer realistic.” Kompany was already critical in 2019, when he was still a player.
Stress in professional football also takes place off the pitch
“Out of 1,500 players that we monitor, 800 players fall into the category of extreme stress,” complains Alexander Bielefeld, representative of Fifpro in “”. When looking at the number of games, this initially seems surprising, because on average, professional footballers from Champions League participants played 50.2 fewer games last season than in the 2002/2003 season (55.2).
Bielefeld warns that the burden should not just be reduced to the number of games. Football has become significantly more intense and faster in recent years. In the Premier League, the sprint distance increased by 50 percent between 2007 and 2022. The professional field of a professional footballer has also become significantly more complex. Fifpro now also takes into account the kilometers traveled as a parameter in its studies. While the players don’t have to run sprints on a flight, they also have a harder time recovering.
“This is definitely a moment that I would have liked to have shared with my dad”
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FIFA mainly relies on the number of games and has so far only made small adjustments to control the load: more substitutions are possible and the squad limits have been raised slightly. This isn’t enough for the players and Fifpro, which is why the association has filed a lawsuit with the EU Commission.
However, it is questionable whether this will bear fruit. So far, most of the appeals have come to nothing. And although professionals like Rodri have raised these concerns, more drastic measures such as player strikes are likely to remain unrealistic for the time being.
Sources: , with DPA
Source: Stern
I am Pierce Boyd, a driven and ambitious professional working in the news industry. I have been writing for 24 Hours Worlds for over five years, specializing in sports section coverage. During my tenure at the publication, I have built an impressive portfolio of articles that has earned me a reputation as an experienced journalist and content creator.
