The sight of English soccer player Harry Kane shuffling off the field after an hour of ineffective play in the European Championship final was not how most would have expected his tournament to end.
In truth, he probably should not have been playing at all. Kane missed the end of the Bundesliga season with Bayern Munich because of a back injury. It was serious enough that it made him questionable for the team’s Champions League semifinal against Real Madrid in May.
He was not the only player to be hampered. Jude Bellingham was still suffering from the aftereffect of a dislocated shoulder in November and may need surgery. For months, Bellingham has been wearing strapping on his shoulder that enables him to play freely. Some good news for Real Madrid fans is that Kylian Mbappé is unlikely to need surgery on his nose after breaking it while playing for France at the Euros.
Spanish goalkeeper Unai Simon had an operation on his wrist shortly after the tournament, which had been needed for some time. He managed to get through Spain’s victorious Euro 2024 campaign by using painkilling injections.
It was a similar story at the Copa América. You will have seen the pictures of Lionel Messi in tears, his ankle looking about twice the size it should have been after injuring it in the final. He already had to nurse his way to that final after suffering a groin problem in Argentina’s second game against Chile.
His Inter Miami teammate, Luis Suárez, also had to miss the MLS All-Star Game with what has been described as knee discomfort, presumably related to the chronic knee issue he has had to manage for the past few years.
But perhaps more than all of that, many of the biggest players just looked exhausted.
“It’s so tough with crazy schedules and then coming together for the end of the season for one last tournament,” Bellingham said after the final. “It’s difficult on the body — mentally and physically you are exhausted.”
Bellingham, 21, played 54 games for club and country in a season that spanned 11 months, from the second week in August to the middle of July. Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti tried to manage Bellingham’s game time, giving him the odd week off here and there, but even when he was left on the bench at times, Ancelotti pressed him into action — shoulder strapping and all.
It is no wonder Bellingham was tired, but his workload was relatively light compared with others. Manchester United’s seemingly indestructible Bruno Fernandes got through 5,399 minutes last season. William Saliba of Arsenal in the Premier League and Germany’s captain, Ilkay Gundogan, also got more than 5,000 minutes under their belts. “It has been a very demanding season,” Gundogan said during Euro 2024.
Julián Álvarez might not have played the same number of minutes (3,480 for Manchester City), but his schedule has been brutal. His season began Aug. 11, playing for Manchester City until May, with his longest break between games coming in at 13 days. Fifteen days after the FA Cup final, he appeared in his first pre-Copa game for Argentina. He played two friendlies before starting all but one of its games during the tournament, then, after a break of 10 days, he was on the team for Argentina’s opening game at the Olympics, that marathon game against Morocco.
All of which backs up the point being made by FIFPro, the global players’ union, and some of the leading European leagues as they issue a legal complaint against FIFA, accusing soccer’s governing body of presiding over an international calendar that is “beyond saturation.”
FIFPro said: “The schedule has become unsustainable for national leagues and a risk for the health of players. FIFA’s decisions over the last years have repeatedly favored its own competitions and commercial interests, neglected its responsibilities as a governing body and harmed the economic interests of national leagues and the welfare of players.”
It is worth pointing out that complaints from Premier League teams about overwhelming scheduling ring hollow. They conduct lengthy preseason and postseason tours, which involve heavy travel. Chelsea is playing five games in 13 days in a preseason tour spanning the United States. Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United flew to Australia the day after the last Premier League season finished.
The point remains that the approach of FIFA — and most other governing bodies, including UEFA — to scheduling has consistently been “more is more.” The expansion of the World Cup from 2026, the revamped Champions League format, the new Club World Cup, the Nations League and whatever other brilliant wheezes they can dream up, all mean it is technically possible for an elite men’s player to play 87 games next season. No player will actually be on the field that many times, but it illustrates the point FIFPro is making. There is too much soccer, and even if you do not really care about player burnout, the overwhelming amount of games devalues the whole thing.
“You start in August and until May you don’t stop,” said Spanish soccer player Mikel Oyarzabal. “Then in June there is the national team and after that a Club World Cup. They will finish up in July and then, a few weeks later, the league starts again. It needs to be turned back, but it is not up to us. We have to adapt as best we can.”
Clubs generally do their best to regulate the number of games their key players appear in, and have a variety of methods to judge when the players are reaching their capacity and need a rest. But the sheer number of games — and their importance — means it can be difficult to determine which ones a player can miss.
There is also the desire from the players involved to play in games that from a medical perspective, they probably should not have done. Everyone who played through injury at the Euros and the Copa this summer probably would have rested had they been run-of-the-mill league games.
FIFPro has also raised concerns about excessive painkilling injections that are often given to players to squeeze a few more minutes or games out of them. The risk is not the injections themselves, but that they mask the pain that serves as the body’s way of letting the player know they are injured.
The point is that at the major tournaments this summer, despite brilliant play, thrilling moments and new heroes, the overall spectacle was diminished because the biggest stars either got injured, were playing with existing injuries or were tired.
“We are human beings, not machines,” former Liverpool and West Ham goalkeeper Adrián said. “We need a balance, for the fans to enjoy football, too. We need to be fresh and able to play. There are no movies without actors.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
