Manchester City received a ridiculous fixture pile-up earlier this week about their Carabao Cup third-round matchup against Watford. Less than 48 hours after their Premier League match against Arsenal, the champions will take on Watford. For the champs to be put in that preposterous scenario so early in the season is absurd. Bernardo Silva and Kevin De Bruyne have now also expressed their displeasure with the expanding football schedule.
Kevin De Bruyne has now voiced his reservations regarding the players’ timetable. “The true problem will emerge after the Club World Cup,” he stated in a Reuters interview. We are aware that the first Premier League game and the Club World Cup final will take place in only three weeks. We now have three weeks off to recuperate and get ready for eighty more games. Things might go well this year, but things might not go well the following year. Other player associations, such as the Professional Footballers’ Association in England, have also looked for answers. The problem is that FIFA and UEFA are constantly adding new matches, and while we can voice our concerns, no answers have been discovered. Money appears to have more influence than the athletes’ voices.
Bernardo Silva expresses his displeasure with the ever-expanding timetable.
Bernardo Silva talked earlier this week about the impact his high schedule has had on him. He gave the following explanation in an interview with the Portuguese magazine Record: “The timetable is utterly ridiculous. We just found out that the English League Cup game will only take place on one day off. For months, we’ll most likely play every three days. It has been utterly ridiculous. You still have to play two games in the Champions League if you don’t make it to the round of 16. Although the squads are larger, that doesn’t mean that it’s simple. It’s not been simple. My friends and family get to see me pretty infrequently. The amount of games we’re subjected to is absurd.”
The problems with the expanding timetable have been further highlighted by Bernardo Silva and Kevin De Bruyne.
The problems with football’s expanding schedule have been further highlighted by remarks made by Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva. Right now, a portion of the rich broadcast income pie that the game generates is what’s driving the problem of more football. The players will bear the consequences of FIFA and UEFA’s constant expansion of their contests.
The extended FIFA Club World Cup is scheduled to start at the end of the 24/25 season, as Kevin De Bruyne pointed out. There would be more matches for the already worn-out players to deal with because it will have a format akin to the World Cup. As De Bruyne noted, the consequences would become apparent at the start of the 25/26 season. A player’s season-long vacation cannot be expected to last merely three and a half weeks. That isn’t a sensible concept. The number of games being played in the game may push it over the edge by the end of the current season. When the Club World Cup is over, that will be something to look forward to.
As Bernardo Silva clarified, the challenges faced by the layers also have a human component to them. Indeed, they receive hefty compensation for the privilege of becoming professional football players. But there is a price for it. It is frequently overlooked in-game coverage that the players are also husbands, fathers, and people. To compete at the highest level, players must make sacrifices, but so do their families and loved ones. That is the aspect of football playing that is related to people.
The problem of how much football the players must play is not going away. Two more voices have been added to the concerns raised by the players: Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva. The issue will eventually reach a breaking point, although it’s unclear when the game will reach that point. However, given the volume of games being played, that point isn’t too far off.
