FIFPRO want players to take a 28-day off-season break and a 14-day mid-season break
World players’ union FIFPRO have stated that ‘compulsory breaks’ are urgently needed in order to prevent player burnout.
The union have suggested that a player should miss a match after as few as three games in the ‘critical zone’.
FIFPRO’s 2020/21 workload report for men’s football shows that elite professionals are now playing more than two thirds of their minutes in a season in the critical zone (appearances of at least 45 minutes in games less than five days apart).
According to FIFPRO, the potential consequences of featuring in back-t0-back matches include a greater risk of injury, as well as affecting the length of a player’s career.
Its report also suggested that one option for limiting players’ game time and therefore reducing the chance of them entering the critical zone is to rest them in domestic cup games, notably competitions like the Carabao Cup.
“The argument for scrapping the competition altogether comes up time and time again,” the report said. “These secondary cups could also be reimagined as under-23 competitions.”
The data used in the report is made up from about 40,000 appearances by a sample group of 265 male footballers from 44 leagues between June 2018 and August 2021.
For players who were representing their national side last season, 67 per cent of their minutes were played in the critical zone – an increase of 6 per cent in comparison to the previous two campaigns.
📊⚽ NEW DATA: The 2021 #FIFPRO Player Workload Monitoring men's report, produced with @Football_BM is out now!#AtTheLimit
— FIFPRO (@FIFPRO) October 5, 2021
“The data shows we must release pressure on players at the top end of the game and this report provides new research why we need regulation and enforcement mechanisms to protect players,” said FIFPRO general secretary Jonas Baer-Hoffmann.
“These are the type of solutions that must be at the top of the agenda whenever we discuss the development of the match calendar. It’s time to make player health and performance a priority.”
Additionally, the report also examined the travel demands on top players – particularly travel as a result of representing their national side.
Considering this, Baer-Hoffmann stated that he could see an ‘upside’ in FIFA’s proposed ideas to reduce the number of international windows from five to ‘one or two’ in a calendar year and reduce the amount of games in a qualifying campaign.
“Quite a bit of thought still needs to go into it, but could that carry positive benefits? Yes. I think there is upside in this for many stakeholders,” he said.
“I see also an upside for (club and national team) coaches who would have a longer consistent period to work with their team.
“So yes, there is merit to discuss that, but it would still require a bit of tweaking and consideration of the many impacts it could have.”
Amongst FIFA’s other potential changes includes a requirement for players to take a 25-day rest period so that they can recuperate after summer tournaments.
Whilst Baer-Hoffmann is in favour of this idea, he did state that he would slightly ‘tweak’ the proposed number of days – with FIFPRO keen to reiterate its suggestion of players taking a 28-day off-season break, alongside a 14-day mid-season break.
“The change of the conversation, the public discourse and how players are talking about it themselves, and how coaches are starting to talk about this, for the last few years, that’s where these things come from,” he said.
“Is this positive progress that FIFA is making this kind of proposal? Of course. I would tweak the 25 and make it maybe a tad longer.
“But in principle, of course, having such a period enshrined in the calendar or international regulations is incredibly important because what we see today, especially I would say with young players and players changing clubs, is that the pressure for them to return immediately when training camp starts is enormous.”
Baer-Hoffmann added that if clubs plan their players’ schedule correctly, then there is no reason that the suggested safeguards would see players missing the so-called ‘big matches’.
He said: “It is far less problematic to do it this way than to wait for the muscle tear to come, and then the player is out six weeks and nobody sees them, which ultimately harms the competitions and the fan experience more.”
The general secretary suggested that a squad of 25 players – with rotation – would more than likely see players protected from potential burnout.
He also admitting that he was ‘not convinced’ by the claim that the clubs with greater financial resources would simply ‘stockpile’ more talented players in order to counter-balance the games missed by their other star players.
Should FIFPRO’s proposal happen, a Premier League player could see a reduction of between two and eight matches missed through injury per season across club and national team duty.
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