oh so now he’s an advocate for player welfare…
Other than reducing teams in the top flight from 20 to 18 (like in Germany and France) what else can be done? You can’t reduce the amount of CL games, cups are single leg only until later stages.
Clearly adding more games is incredibly stupid, but I don’t see how you can reduce them.
I am all for 18 teams.
Btw, in Germany all cup games are single-leg. And there is only one national cup, like God intended. So there is still further room to reduce games in England, apart from the size of the league.
Just kick Chelsea and City out and it’s sorted.
Amen
People here are all for agreeing about too many matches etc. but the next time a smaller team attempts to play defensively and “boring” against a bigger side it will all be calls for stop clocks and defending having 15 minutes added on at the end of games because “The ball was only in play X amount of minutes!”
The complete hypocritical attitudes that appeare from the same people depending on the thread title and what the sentiment is within the comment section when they arrive is very tiring.
Says Erik ten Hag who is allergic to rotations even in most meaningless matches.
Not that I don’t agrre with him, but still.
100%. Doesn’t help that there is an international break every three weeks. It’s mental. Give them time to recover
He’s not wrong. This is anecdotal, but the amount of non-contact muscle and ligament injuries I’ve seen in the past year to players that don’t get a break on international duty seems genuinely unprecedented.
Nation’s League needs to go. There’s no need to have competitive international matches outside of WC/Continental Cups and qualifying.
No one actually gives a shit about Nation’s League, but the international managers have to play their best squad available to pad their record and keep their job. Fewer competitive international matches would be better for everyone involved. Let some youngsters get a cap in a meaningless friendly and acjieve their dream of representing their country, and give the world class internationals a damn rest!
There’s a joke about United’s playstyle and “crossed the limits of what fans can handle” somewhere
As a football fan, I’m really confused why I’m hearing so much talk about how the schedule is more congested than ever and players are at a breaking point. Since I started watching football 15 years ago, the schedule has been the same as it’s always been for the players in the Top 5 leagues, same cups, same UCL format with 4 international breaks every season and I major tournament every 2 years. Yet the for the last couple of years I’ve been hearing many coaches, players and fans going on about how their age too many games nowadays when the schedule is the same as it was 15 years ago. Also the new UCL and CWC format come into effect yet so I’m even more confused. And it’s usually big 6 coaches, fans and players that complain about the schedule like someone like they have the chance to rest their players and use the bench or academy players in cup games. Arteta doesn’t have to play Saka in the FA CUP and league cup if he genuinely cares about his fitness levels. Can somebody explain what I’m missing because I am very confused?
They got rid of international friendlies in Europe and replaced them with the Nations League so there is definitely more competitive football for international players.
Also they increased the number of teams that qualify for international tournaments so that’s more players playing more games. And in South America they seem to be having international tournaments more regularly than they used to.
Laughs in Brazil schedule
Ty next
Capitalist Stakeholders: Okay.
plays bruno once again
Difficult to disagree looking at the injuries. United have 7-8 injured currently and many of them key players.
I know r/soccer hates Newcastle but what’s happening to them at the moment is a poster for what’s wrong here (so are Brighton, and others, and indeed most clubs have big injury lists).
Club gets to the champions league spot for the 1st time in ages, spends basically the max allowed by FFP to try to increase the squad to cope but it’s nowhere near enough. Yesterday 10+ out after getting several back post international break. Their 25 man squad left the line up as including a 17 year old in the first 11, 3 goalkeepers on the bench, 4 kids with basically 0 prem mins and 2 semi-retired lads whose ages probably sum to 112.
If we’re not to change to less games, do away with injury time (by punishing harshly any time wasting perhaps?). Or could some forced rotation work - eg in baseball they often play 5 days in a row but have different pitchers each day. Could limit the number of starters who are allowed to play a mid-week game after playing 70+mins at the weekend.
Prem should make squad caps larger at the least if the schedule must be like this
My only worry with increasing the squad size is that it would make the league even more uneven, as the big clubs hoover up more talent.
“I love playing 12.30” Jürgen Klopp