With the changing landscape of the footballing world, changes are being made to competitions, making them longer and creating more fixtures. This is done to increase revenues, as more matches means bigger TV deals.
But what about the players? How are players expected to take on the extra burden of these fixtures without doing damage to their bodies and shortening their careers? This is something that has many Los Blancos stars worried.
Speaking in a press conference ahead of Real Madrid’s UEFA Super Cup tie against Atalanta in Warsaw, Marca have reported on the concerns of Dani Carvajal and Carlo Ancelotti.
Carvajal said: “It makes no sense, we can’t keep up this pace. We and our families suffer,” referring to the grueling schedule he and his teammates face.
Adding to such comments, the manager said that: “It’s going to be a very demanding season but one that could be very successful. We’re looking forward to it. Everything will be very demanding from the start.”
It won’t just be the players who feel the workload increasing, as Carlo Ancelotti could well face anywhere in the region of 150 press conferences over the next 11 months if his side progress as far as possible in every competition they play.
This massive increase in fixtures is mostly down to the reformatting of competitions, with a new-look FIFA Club World Cup seeing that competition increase to 32 participants and the newly reformatted UEFA Champions League which now sees clubs play in a ‘league phase’ rather than a group stage.
Over the next year or so, it will be fascinating to watch how clubs manage to navigate this increased workload, and whether we see squad sizes increase across the board.
