The world’s top soccer players being overworked like never before is why a growing number of stars may go on strike. Tim Howard discusses with Boardroom.
The world’s top soccer players are chronically overworked at a rate we’ve never seen in the sport’s centuries-long history.
Take Manchester City star midfielder Rodri, who also stars for the Spanish national team, for example. Between the Premier League, various English cups and competitions, the Champions League, and national team duties, including a title at Euro 2024, the 28-year-old played in an unheard-of 63 games during the 2023-24 schedule. Rodri’s campaign began with the Prem on Aug. 11, 2023, and didn’t finish until the 2-1 win over England in the Euros final on July 14.
Rodri’s official offseason lasted exactly five weeks before the 2024 Prem opener but didn’t include training in preparing for the new league year. He expressed his frustration at being overworked, suggesting in mid-September that players were close to going on strike over the issue.
“If it keeps this way, there will be a moment where we have no other option,” he said. “It’s something that worries us because we are the guys that suffer.”
Last month, Europe’s top clubs began Champions League play with an expanded format, with group stage games increasing from six to eight, the field growing from 32 teams to 36, and half the teams competing in a two-game group stage playoffs that adds further mileage on top players’ bodies. And while FIFA’s Club World Cup will move from every year to every four years next summer, it will grow to feature 32 teams rather than the typical eight. For those participating in the tournament next June in the United States, it will further extend seasons that seemingly never end.
FIFPRO, a soccer players union conglomerate of football associations in 66 countries, and Spain’s La Liga filed a complaint to the EU against FIFA last week for its expanding soccer calendar.
Less than a week after Rodri discussed players striking to combat the growing number of matches and the incredible toll and strain it takes on them, he tore the ACL in his right knee, sidelining him until next season. Since then, other star players like Real Madrid and Belgian national team goalie Thibaut Courtois— who tore his ACL in August 2023 — and Aymeric Laporte, a Spanish national team defender and former Man City standout who now plays with Cristiano Ronaldo at Al Nassr, agreed with Rodri’s stance on striking.
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Even former players such as former USMNT and Premier League goalie Tim Howard, who now serves as a Prem studio analyst for NBC Sports, are chiming in on the physical toll such a schedule can have on one’s body.
“We can’t keep adding more games. We just can’t,” Howard told Boardroom late last month at a launch party promoting the latest edition of EA Sports FC 25. “It’s not feasible. It’s more than 60 games, and the best players in the world are doing that five, six, seven years in a row. That’s an accumulation of hundreds of games. They’re not machines. These players are going to break down.”
Howard played 13 Premier League seasons with Manchester United and Everton and admits that he would’ve just shut up and played if put in the same position as today’s modern stars. The mentality these players are taught from when they were children is to be ready to perform at their peak each time they’re called upon.
And when big money is at stake, he said, leagues, teams, and operating bodies will make decisions based on pushing the envelope and making more money.
“That’s normal, but it doesn’t mean it’s right or beneficial,” Howard said.
The teams that pay these players hundreds of thousands of dollars per week and the fans who pay top dollar to watch their beloved stars on the pitch expect these players every week and increasingly multiple times per week. But these players aren’t machines, even with advancements in medicine and sports science. As the Premier League and Champions League seasons are progressing, going into the biggest competitions like the World Cup and Euros, players are running on fumes and not operating in optimal condition now more than ever before. In the biggest matches of their careers, it’s growing more difficult for them to be at their very best.
Although European players have FIFPRO and the Professional Footballers’ Association, Howard believes if players don’t think their well-being is being properly looked after, they’re entitled to take some sort of action to drive awareness of this growing issue. A 2023 study performed by insurance company Howden’s found that players across Europe’s five biggest leagues that played in the 2022 World Cup spent an average of eight days longer injured on the sidelines than their counterparts. Will there eventually be a tipping point where teams seeing their highest-paid players injured due to fatigue and exhaustion have had enough?
“It becomes a problem for FIFA or UEFA when big powerful clubs’ own assets are breaking down and no longer out there,” Howard said. “If they’re paying a hundred million for a player with $200,000 a week in salary multiplied by 20 or so players and now half of ’em are injured, then there will be backlash. At a certain point, something has to give.”
At what point do teams and players come to the realization that they’re playing too many games? Howard thinks we may have already reached that threshold. Just like legendary manager Arsène Wenger did at Arsenal and Jürgen Klopp did at Liverpool, managers may elect to rest their star players at smaller competitions like a Carabao Cup or even a major offseason tournament like the Club World Cup in favor of younger players even at the expense of winning.
While all indications point to this new era of players competing in 50-plus games a year being unsustainable, Howard thinks it’s going to take a lot more injuries and fatigue for teams, leagues, and governing bodies to take this issue more seriously.
“But when the assets of these clubs are beginning to break down,” he said, “they’ll speak up 100%.”
While there are only a few instances to this point of top players threatening to strike, people listen to a player like Rodri who’s at the top of his game and won two major trophies last season for club and country. While this issue may not come to a head for a while, as Howard said, the public is now aware of a problem that could very well help define the next decade of elite international soccer.
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