Whiney interviews won’t change anything. But imagine all teams collectively boycotting an entire matchday. They just refuse to play. This would do huge damage to the leagues, UEFA, FIFA etc. And the clubs or associations can’t just punish everyone. They rely on the players. Don’t the players even have a union? So why is nothing like that happening? The only reason I can think of is that the pain isn’t strong enough yet to actually act.
They paid very well.
I don’t see the issue at all for fans. Don’t watch the lesser games if it bothers you. Teams can have a bigger squad to compensate for more games. Also players have longer careers with more matches than ever before.
I would have played match every day a week and twice on sunday for that money
Brother this people make millions of euros per year. A middle class person works at least 8 hours for 5 days and gets paid much less. So they shouldn’t be pissed about it, and do their job.
They are all under contract. If the leagues suffer monetary damages, they can sue all the players/clubs/managers responsible for said damages.
So if anyone were to take a stand against this, it would have to be the clubs (which they won’t cause that would mean less money).
IMO UEFA, FIFA etc. aren’t even the problem.
The clubs are. They’re the ones that pick the players in those matches. They could easily use more of their U21 players and rotate more (would probably be better for youth development for them to get more time in first team games too!) but they don’t. They only use them when first team players are out injured and then whinge about it.
I mean… it is the fans who are watching and attending those matches.
More matches more time to experiment with additional squad players and rest key players against lesser known teams, release them on loans and make MONEY save on wages.
Repeat.
Emi Martinez was a loan player most of his life and just had enough loan spells.
It’s never happening
money.
just look at the crazy amount of added time being added to each half. they only care about money.
do footballers have unions in different leagues?
While I agree in general that there is a lot of money-grabbing going around, I’m curious why you think added time is a sympton of this? The reason given that it’s trying to more accurately reflect time the ball is out of play and therefore give us more actual game time
I’m not saying you’re wrong I just can’t think of the connection
Money. Lots and lots of money. They all bath in it.
I seem to remember Sir Alex refusing to register Manchester United in the FA Cup because there were too many matches. I don’t remember how it was resolved.
There weren’t too many matches as such, it was that they wouldn’t adjust the schedule when we were in the FIFA Club World Cup/Championship on the opposite side of the planet. So we didn’t enter the FA Cup that year.
The issue is that the managers and players only mention it as a problem when it affects THEM, and then when they don’t get in trouble over it, they join the counter-choire of “it’s not a problem for us, so they should just man up and kick on”. Then the lack of memory beyond the last 3 months, and oh yeah MONEY. Also, the effect these excessive matches have on different clubs is very uneven. A club that goes all the way in cups will suffer greatly, where as a club that does not will usually just have a match a week and not give a damn…
I mean Guardiola mooted that a player strike might happen on this issue about a month ago. It was certainly an issue in the last pfa election https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/59347490.amp
I suspect the problem is ultimately for competitive animals - which the top players are. Refusing the opportunity to play goes against their nature. All players are drilled to seek out and seize opportunities for first team football. You don’t make it out of the academy (and the majority of people don’t make it as pro footballers) to the first team if you don’t have an insanely professional mentality and strive to play every minute you can. A lot of players would fear being dropped permanently if they asked managers for rest or getting benched by a sub or rotation option impressing when called upon. Pep himself has said he has to rotate purely to keep players happy with their minutes. Zidane spoke about how difficult it was to convince Cristiano Ronaldo to sit on the bench even if it was obvious that as a guy in his mid 30s his career would be longer and better if he missed the odd game where he wasn’t needed like a copa del rey tie vs a 3rd division side or a UCL group stage dead rubber.
This factors into the other issue. It affects such a small proportion of the players. The vast majority of professional players play outside the top leagues and top divisions and therefore don’t play anything other than league and cup games and don’t get called up in international breaks. Even in the premier league the majority of teams don’t play European football, even amongst those who do play in Europe there’s no guarantee they go all the way to the final every year. Even on the teams who can guarantee that (basically just Man City) they have a deep bench and rotate - Haaland and Rodri are the only guys who play every game for their club and their country when fit. For the majority of players who the unions represent they want more game time not less. There are far more players in the situation of (picks random cb) James Tomkins who plays every now and then for Crystal Palace so is rarely playing midweek and always has the international breaks off than Virgil Van Dijk (in the same position) who plays pretty much every game as Liverpool captain regularly making deep runs in both cups and Europe every season so playing multiple midweek matches and captaining the Netherlands every international break and 2 summer tournaments in a row.
Most players have Tomkins match load not Van dijks
It’s not that I don’t believe them when they say it’s too many games. However I still don’t understand why teams don’t simply ignore the league cup matches in their entirety and just send their u23s + their coaching staff to those games, while keeping their 20 to 25 core players + manager at home. Or even better: scheduling recovery/tactical sessions during league cup nights
Surely the FA will take notice when teams just say “fuck it” like that. Are there rules in place to prohibit this?
Because they want to compete for money. Hypocrites.