Rafael Leao seems to agree with the notion that footballers today play too many games, a topic that is being widely discussed given the increase in injuries across the board.
Faced with the widespread epidemic of muscle injuries, there is a desire to try and find a root cause and one of the suggestions put forward is that players simply have too demanding a schedule with domestic, European and international football.
This morning, Leao reposted an interview given by Koundé on his Twitter profile. According to the Barcelona centre-back, the workload of the modern player is too much.
“There are too many games. The speed has become more and more intense, this causes too many injuries. The pace at which we are going is becoming more and more dangerous, there are more and more serious injuries. People say we used to play so much. Even if this were true, it doesn’t mean it was right in the past.”
Leao definitely agrees with this line of thinking and too many games with too much intensity leads to too many injuries.
— Rafael Leão (@RafaeLeao7) November 24, 2023
Two aspects of injury spike in my opinion – too many games between club and NT (domestic league, CL, cups, national friendlies, league of nations, qualifications) and having too many injury prone players on the squad – RLC, Pulisic, Okafor, Giroud (age related). And Pioli is probably hard on their asses in trainings due to bad results lately.
Maybe it’s because I’m French but Players need to go on strike to demand fewer games. And clubs should support them
I had posted before the schedule of games in our 2006-07 season showing it’s no different than now.ie game every 3 or 4 days. I believe the difference is that now the international friendlies have been replaced with competitive games. So this not exactly a relaxed match that’s being played but a competitive match in between other competitive matches. Plus the South Americans now go to qualifiers. I remember back in the day Brazil used to play their local players while the stars were used only when the major tournaments come around. Now the stars play the CONMEBOL qualifiers
There’s two or even almost three times more international matches than ever before! Nations League etc.
Yea there that but the Nation’s league really has mucked it up. All in the name of making the international friendlies mean something..and it used to mean something…..it was called rest but at the same time make.a nice kick about while playing for your country. Now it’s a competitive match. Those are two different things
I remember we also went a longer stretch of domestic games before International breaks too