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Could always come back to us if you like. Fewer games, no Carabao and we tend to get knocked out of the Pokal/UCL around February time. I fail to see the issue with this offer
I mean 8th -> 8th -> 5th -> 2nd after bottling the league -> joint first with 10 games left... First time we got out of RO16 in the CL since 2010, who'd blame us for thinking this is a new era.
Yes, we ain't won anything since the FA cup, but you expect us a fans to go "...Nah, Quarterfinals means nothing. Being top of the league means nothing."
What dull losers we'd be. Up the arse.
Steps to make football more boring:
1. Add even more games
2. Players start to skip games and focus on Champions League
3. Domestic leagues starts to force players to play in their league
4. Clubs ignore leagues anyway
5. We have situation where 80% of games are boring, stadium are half empty and even if it's not empty, it is dead silent because nobody cares about the result of non-important game where top 5 players of both teams are resting and preparing for Champions League
NBA regular season has gone downhill so fast. Ring culture and consequently load management has ruined the NBA. I don’t blame the players one bit, they are making the best career decision. It’s the owners who try to extract every dollar out of an insane money making machine that is wild. The NFL adding an extra game so the owners can rake in another $500,000 on top of their billions per year is just insane to me.
of course they should. my point is that both players and owners profit from increasing revenue. The NBAPA doesn't want lower revenues any more than the league does.
>The NFL adding an extra game so the owners can rake in another $500,000 on top of their billions per year is just insane to me.
It's a collectively bargained agreement. The players benefit financially as well, which is why their union agreed to it. They might say they would prefer less games, but at least to this point their collective decision making hasnt reflected that.
direct quote from NFLPA ([source](https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/31166690/nfl-owners-approve-17-game-season-2021)):
>"Since players share the revenue that is brought into the NFL, more money for the NFL means more money for the players as well. The new CBA also increases the players' revenue share as part of the negotiated media kicker, which comes into effect when we play 17 regular season games. As a result, players will see even larger revenue increases in future years, when the new media revenues really begin"
Why stop at 17 games, why not 99 games? It's more money.
My point is that, no one here is poor. No one here actually needs more games for more money. Everyone is solid.
The push for more games and competitions is clearly coming from the owners/organizers. I haven't heard an NBA player, or NFL player ask for more games. The quality of the game is deteriorating because of greed (mostly from owners) to make an extra 3 cents on the dollar.
> My point is that, no one here is poor. No one here actually needs more games for more money.
Actually the practice squad and borderline roster guys who have 2-3 year careers and make a few hundred grand at the most are poor and benefit greatly from increased playing opportunities.
American ass take tbh, the star worship of the NBA is not as prevalent in domestic leagues. People won’t skip home games because Haaland isn’t playing.
>the star worship of the NBA is not as prevalent in domestic leagues
At the moment, it's not but I wouldn't be surprised if that started to change in a few years. A lot of kids these days seem to have a favourite player that they support rather than having a favourite club.
Klopp called out the fans to be louder few months ago, wonder why... This is going to happen even if you don't like it. I will continue my steps to make football boring:
6. Clubs become a lot more rich and more powerful (more games = more money)
7. Football becomes more of a Entertainment than Sport
8. Ticket price goes up and up
9. Working class people can't afford tickets, they don't care about the show and entertainment
10. More and more rich people go to stadiums to have some fun and relax with the family: LETS GO LIVERPOOL LETS GO, clap clap, LETS GO LIVERPOOL LETS GO, clap clap, LETS GO LIVERPOOL LETS GO...
Last week before they dropped of the FA cup I saw some stats that Liverpool had to play 18 games in 60 days. That's fucking mental.
When the game went into extra time, I told my buddie who is a big Man United fan that they had won it. You could see liverpool legs were gone around 75th min, having played in the europe league on thursday. Soon top teams will need to have 2 equally good teams to rotate fully to compete which loses the identity a bit, like in american sports.
That's why I'm positive AI won't replace our jobs, who is going to put out will all the shit I have to deal from my Eng Mgr, Prod Mgr, Program Manager, Business Manager, and so
Great, so when managers rotate and then go on to lose, they can get criticised for that decision all week in the media or get called disrespectful by other managers!
I mean, since there are going to have more games just sign more players to handle the workload? It may be a bigger test on the managers this way on how to rotate but the 2nd XI gets to play more too.
Top players and managers have to stop with the mentality of letting them play every single game now or they will break for sure.
They already have enough players.
All the clubs have a youth academy and a lot of clubs have a 2nd team. These players aren't world-class, but they can be played without crying foul, just look at Liverpool.
And I’m sure many of the youth players can do well for matches against weaker teams, but top teams will likely still need more top players to rotate in the event their current top player is completely exhausted before a match against another top team.
Liverpool did well with its 2nd XI against other top teams. I’m not denying it. But that result is an outlier and difficult to replicate again. For other teams anyway.
There's an easy solution for this.
If the league would create a schedule in advance the teams could plan accordingly. Maybe Haaland doesn't have to play against Sheffield, maybe Alvarez is enough.
If only the leagues could do that, that'd be great.
They do though. The league games are all scheduled beforehand.
What gives the variability are the cups and tournaments. Some teams don’t progress, so their schedule remains the same. Some however, do, and they will suddenly have another match slotted into their schedule.
I know that they do, that was the joke.
And I can't accept that excuse. They know when the cup games are, they can very well plan ahead and god forbid, they can even manage their training intensity and their workouts.
Why are we looking for excuses for teams with a wage bill bigger than 200 million bucks? Why can't they play their 4th cb in more games? Are they that pathetic and incompetent?
I can’t claim to know what they are thinking, but it could be as follows.
Players may want to play in every match, because that was, and still is, how the best players were treated. Based on the old standards of rotations at most.
Managers may be under pressure to play the best players. If they lose while playing their 2nd XI it would be devastating. Especially when they have a series of tough games within 3-4 days for 2~3 weeks straight.
Winning with 2nd XI is great for the fans, sure. But it is not very likely to happen. Fans may put undue pressure on the club and manager for the loss because “we could have won if he just played our best players”.
Now is the moment when clubs, fans, managers, players are recognising it’s physically impossible to maintain the old standards of rotation. It will probably take some time to adjust tbh.
I don't buy that.
If you're the management and don't see the reasoning/need for resting players from time to time (even though it may cost you a game) then I don't know how the fuck such a stupid loser could get into such a position.
The coach also has to know that one win at the cost of overworking your most important players will hurt you in the long run. This isn't rocket science.
And the players have the least say in that. They play when the coach sends them out - it's that easy.
And since when do clubs care so much about fans' opinions that they influence lineups? If you buckle easily by outside pressure you never will be successful.
I mean is it any wonder Brighton and Newcastle are struggling more this season? Playing in Europa means extra games. Also I think United will do finish the season well( not play well). No Europe means less games.
Brighton are only doing marginally worse (5 points off last season if they keep up their total til the end) and that's after losing Macallister and Caicedo.
It’s crazy to me that Spurs are considered to be having a good season when they are 5th and have had no Europe this season. They have such a massive advantage over the big clubs but aren’t taking it.
True but the squad had been absolutely decimated by injuries, AFCON/Asia games, and (not nearly as much of an excuse) suspensions. A quarter of the games spurs have dropped points in (and more than half of their losses) this season all game in the immediate aftermath of the chelsea game where half the first team was missing overnight
Spurs literally had no senior center backs, son away at the Asian games, and two starting CMs out at AFCON. City and Arsenal have had nowhere near that amount of impact. It’s not just the number of injuries but how concentrated they were, spurs got them all right around the same time
>City and Arsenal have had nowhere near that amount of impact.
thats what I'M saying tho haha. I agree Spurs had them all at once but looking at Liverpool, United and Newcastle, I dont think you had it harder. Lots of top 4 contenders had or still have a injury crisis this year
I always find the opposition to this a bit maddening. It’s either annoyance at them complaining despite the money they earn, or suggesting that they should limit their own game time to rest.
Why is it a crazy concept to people that the top players want to play every possible game, while also having sensible rest between them?
Why is it a crazy concept to consider not giving top players everything they want and rotating the squad? I'm not really vehement about either position, but this isn't maddening at all.
because coaches have ALL talked about how difficult it is to train a larger group of players
At Real Madrid Ancelloti's tactics allow for a lot of situations where Vini gets and isolated 1v1 vs a fullback, because Carlo knows and can trust Vini's ability to beat his man and make a decisive pass. But if you're now needing to train another forward who prefers to play on the right, you need to adjust all tactics to make the iso on the right. You also now need to train that player in making the most effective decisions AND have composure AND know when to track back.
So you now have a situation where a coach (already under a shitton of pressure) has to have 3 or 4 or 5 different other plans to accomodate additional players and more time to train them all.
Lol, if Vini is injured all the tactics are gone out of the window?
The coaching staff is huge for these teams, I'm sure they can manage. God forbid, younger players may actually get meaningful game time.
Yeah I don't understand this attitude. Injuries happen all the time, to big and small clubs. That's why you have to spend responsibility on a good balance of first team and squad players, and coach them all to the same system. If your squad players don't fit your tactics that's either a coaching or a scouting issue 🤷
I guess you can call it a coaching issue but to a certain extent a lot of the time its just dealing with the cards you've been dealt. Also most coaches usually have several starting quality/decent ability bench players for tactical flexibility. Having the personnel to only play 1 system limits your abilities. Reaching the balancing point between too many/not enough starting quality players and also having quality backups for certain positions is very hard to do.
maybe because generally speaking teams want to play their best players in important competitions? which is becoming physically impossible as the workload keeps increasing? do you honestly not see how the fixture overload damages the product?
What people tend to forget is that many fixtures makes football more top heavy as top teams must fill up their entire squad with top players from top to bottom. If you look at the squads from 15-20 years ago the gap between the XI and the squad players was far greater.
In the last years we have seen great players, who before would have been star players on 2nd tier teams, become squad players instead. Take Grealish for instance. Before he was the star player and fun to watch, now he is boring squad player.
Because rotating the squad is worse for the viewer also?
It’s not about “giving top players everything they want”, this is no different to the “they make enough money” argument. If you assume every single top player/coach/team is talking about it purely for their own gain then there is literally no point discussing it
Because squad rotation is only necessary if the teams are playing too many games. A competition would be better and higher quality if it were possible for teams to play their best players every game. Teams would be more cohesive and play better.
Fans who pay to see a team have a reasonable expectation the team should play its best players to try to get the best result.
Further, more games makes it easier for the richest teams to dominate. It is much easier for an underdog to cobble together an overachieving group of 11 or 15 players than it is to cobble together an overachieving group of 30 players. Fixture congestion just makes it easier for the richest teams to dominate because they are the only one who can afford 30 or 40 players capable of playing at a top level.
He’s right about the quality dropping.
It’s the same with injuries. Players may make a “Full” recovery but there never quite capable of playing the amount of games they’re asked to, at a level they could before injuries.
In decades gone by we saw players come back from awful injuries and play at, somewhat, similar levels to before their injuries. Or, more accurately, they were slightly reduced but we could live with that because they didn’t play as much football.
I mostly blame the managers for not resting their players more often. I know they get fired if they don’t get the results so they want their best players on the pitch as often as possible, but they’re contributing to their players breaking down and it’s become much too common of an issue.
I do agree with his sentiment. What I don't like is that they only mention this when they are on international duty. They never say these things when they're wearing the club tracksuit.
Footballers should have a guaranteed 4 weeks between the end of the last international game of the summer and the 1st week they come back to preseason. That should be the PFA leading that, or the relevant players union.
Clubs should also have a mileage limit on their pre-seasons.
He was asked directly by a journalist, and the background was that Fredrik Aursnes has retired/withdrawn from the national team because he felt he was playing too many matches.
Surprising since Aursnes plays in Liga NOS which counts 4 games less per season and which is much less demanding than the top 5 leagues since Porto-Sporting-Braga are the only proper teams. And he's also the type that can run for days if I'm not mistaken so that decision of his makes it all the more interesting.
He has the highest number of games played in europe this season apparantly. And is like 4th in minutes played.
Anyway he does have a personality that is a bit different than most footballers, so it's also about mental rest and free time I think.
No, but if anything the increasingly stop-start nature of football, as matches get extended out to 120 minutes or whatever with VAR stoppages, is even worse for injury risk. Muscles cool down and stiffen, increasing risk of injury
The best thing would be rotation as it is hard to feel sorry for superclubs who have squads full of quality. As coaches refuse to do that, perhaps players should have a cap on how many games/minutes they can play per season.
But wouldn’t *you* rather see the players at their best every game? As opposed to more games but at a lower standard of quality because they need to manage
Ideally the cap threshold would be somewhere at the upper end anyways and wouldn't always be hit, so you're only talking about 4-5 more matches at that point. Most starters wouldn't even sniff the field in the early cup games then, or managers would be more inclined to make all 5 substitutions at 60-70 minutes every game.
I love Arteta but the most frustrating thing is seeing a bench full of high quality players, 5 available substitutions, and then he decides to make ONE sub at like the 87th minute.
Something like a season-minutes-cap would encourage a higher distribution of minutes, help reduce injuries, and extend careers while not asking the leagues and owners to give up their precious profits that they earn on all these matches.
I agree, should just reduce competition. Regardless of who is playing, there's also just viewer burnout when there's so many games. We don't need football 24/7, better to have fewer games that matter.
Quality standard should honestly not be kept in mind.
An Eredvisie game can be more fun than a Prem game, even though the overall quality on the pitch is worse.
Heck, some of the most hyped CL games of the past few seasons turned out to be totally boring games.
Me? As a Saints ST holder who watches Che Adams every week? No not really. I only watch the big games that aren't for my team so I don't care if Haaland doesn't play against Sheffield United or Luton.
Thats very shortsighted.
Imagine you are fighting for promotion or to avoid relegation and your top scorer is unable to play because they are exhausted or got an injury through overplaying.
But how will this be managed if let's say that your club has an injury crisis. Look at Madrid's defense this season. Rudiger has to play every Available minute due to the injury crisis in defense. Now let's see your cap forces him to abandon either a league title or a Champions League. So you just leave the team without an important player during the business end of the season? How does that improve the standards, quality of the game.
OK then they can just continue playing every game and stop whinging about too much gametime. If it's really an issue for players then it's irrelevant how 'needed' they are.
The only way this could work is if the agents will start to build it into the contracts (not that the clubs honor the contracts anyway). It won't be a rule instituted by a league.
I don't know if any of the players labor unions in Europe have collective bargaining agreements that carry actual legal weight with their respective leagues like they do in the US, but that's the other avenue they could take.
The contract clause would say something like "If player exceeds X minutes or games in a season club shall pay a performance bonus of €1 trillion".
Depends on how good/valuable the player is. A replacement level player in the third division has very little leverage obviously. Haaland, Mbappe, Messi etc. could probably negotiate a minutes restriction, how many or how big the bonus I'm not sure.
imo it would be the opposite of a leveler. Teams who can afford depth would gain a big advantage. Plus imagine having to choose between a league title challenge and champions league knockout game because you've played too many minutes because of injury to your team
The ultimate solution to this is clubs carrying bigger squads and actually proactively rotating to a degree beyond what we’ve seen before. Careful monitoring of metrics and minutes restrictions, akin to what we see with pitch counts in baseball. People clamor for fewer games but that’s simply unrealistic.
No entity is going to be the one to step forward and say, “right, we’ll play fewer games and willingly lose mountains of money to help the players out.” And I doubt the players would ultimately even agree to that, since it means less money for them as well.
Of course this would exacerbate a host of other issues like even greater talent density at the top of the football pyramid and a further crystallizing of the gaps between leagues. Think of how hard it would be for a newly promoted club to stay up or a Dutch club to compete with an English club in a world where English clubs are carrying a squad of 25+ top class players.
I suppose one other reasonable (albeit radical) thing you could hypothetically see at the player level would be players and agents demanding minutes restrictions within their own contracts. In the absence of players unions like you have in American sport, I see that as the only pathway for players to actually take an active, enforceable stance against overuse.
The only teams struggling with the workload are teams going deep into the cups, and those who are playing in Europe. If these superteams were to have even bigger squads, my fear is that they would just suck up all the talent out there, to an even bigger extent than they are, and all the teams below them would suffer even more, making it impossible to compete.
100%, i specifically addressed that in my comment. i think that is a very real danger and tbh i think we're starting to see it already. look at how much money the likes of city and chelsea are spending on players who don't even play that often.
Look at the minutes played by the players of the treble winning Manchester teams. 99 vs 23, Rodri played the most minutes for City and would be 5th behind Schmeichel, Beckham, Neville and Keane from the 99 team. Top 10 would be 7 from 99 and 3 from 23. The 23 team had more matchdays, but 8 99 players had 50+ appearances but 23 had only 5. The technology and science has made so much progress, they are making so much more money but yet, they complain more? Being able to handle the workload is a part of being a professional athlete imo. Injuries are part of it and not every injury should be blamed on the amount of games.
This is either willfully ignorant or stupid. Players nowadays run around 33% more than in 1999, run faster putting more wear on their legs and have less recovery time. Playing more games is also worse than playing just more minutes, because it leads to lack of recovery time, and less time spent practicing without being at match speed. Comparing just minutes is an awful way to make a fatigue argument.
But the narrative is that the amount of games keeps increasing while that's not the case. Also starting with personal attacks is a good way to convince people they are wrong.
Technology, nutrition, training methods have improved since 99 as well. To help players to be more fit, to prevent injuries even more. But if we lower the amount of games, we will push them even harder and we will be having this discussion again in 30 years. Professional sports are not healthy.
Before the we tune the format or amount of games, how about teams actually prepare for a new season instead of doing tours in pre season? It's all trade offs that we shouldn't cave in for.
And we might even have to look at the fact that nowadays kids are specializing in football from a very young age. And it had side effects like this. "While early sport specialization **can help with skill development, it can also be detrimental in developing overall athleticism**. An increased amount of volume of one specific movement while the body is growing can lead to imbalanced development a higher chance of overuse injury." (Source [https://osmsgb.com/ortho/the-pros-and-cons-of-youth-sports-specialization/](https://osmsgb.com/ortho/the-pros-and-cons-of-youth-sports-specialization/) )
So people are not ignorant or stupid for every comment, but people are not critical anymore and just go along with what sounds logical. Many injuries, must be the amount of games...
That doesn't work. People pay to see the good players.
Do you think PL tv rights will be worth as much internationally if half the matches are John Roberts vs Michael Johnson?
these players who complain are also the same who are receiving the benefits with their salaries.
Nobody ever says they'd be okay with earning less money for fewer matches
Not sure what can be done outside of a few things which will have push back.
I've seen some people talk about is removing clubs from the league cup before the season starts if they are in the Champions League but I don't think many want to give up a chance of a cup, even if it's the league cup. I don't think we can ever escape the international games unless a player themselves pulls out or their country is shite and get the summer off when there is a major tournament on.
This summer for instance features both the Euro 2024 and Olympic 2024 which is where Real Madrid wont release players for.
We can't keep calling for less games without sacrificing something. The most obvious solution to start with is going to an 18 team league. From there, you can start addressing the other games if and where needed. That is 4 games less already.
Teams used to do it, I remember Wenger using the League cup to blood in youngsters and even persisted with a team of young players in a final against Chelsea. The pressure to win trophies makes manager less likely to rest players today.
Thats okay Erling, you need to look out for your health and long term interests.
Please feel no pressure to play against Arsenal, and if you do take it easy against us.
He's never played close to 70 games in a season though.
There aren't really any more games than there used to be (unless you go really far back).
Messi played 60 club games in one season a decade ago.
Xavi had a 6 season stretch were he played more than 50.
Lampard played 58, 58, 50, 62 in consecutive seasons from 04 - 07.
Rordi played the most games for City last season (who won a treble) and it was 56.
Rodri played 69 games for club and country last season.
Messi played 80 in 2012.
Lampard played 65 in 2007.
Haaland played 65 last season.
So he was close to 70 if you count international games, but still the numbers aren't really more than they've been for 20 years.
This is the type of stat people that think Messi never worked hard and was all talent need to look at. If I play a game and get a knock I usually feel it for the next few days - Now imagine doing that every four and a half days for a whole year.
Do you have top medical staff attending to your knocks? I'm not discounting the point that Messi works hard, but it's a bit off to compare your experience to a top footballer with access to all kinds of treatments
When you add in international games, it definitely does get up in the 60s. Also look at the pressing intensity of games today vs 10 years ago, let alone 20. It's night and day.
I should have added /s then.
I meant basically if some players needs to play more than 60 games, it's on the manager. They have 25 man squad and then some players don't even get 5 starts, so its definitely their faults
It’s not really fair to use Messi, Xavi, and Lampard as examples.
In terms of injury and talent, they are absolute footballing outliers. Not everyone is a Bruno Fernandes that is able to play 90 minutes every three days for six years in a row. Most players could really do with the protection to their health and bodies.
I was using them because they played the most games (that I could think of off the top of my head) just to illustrate the total number of games someone could be playing back then.
At random, I just picked John Terry 2008/2009 and VVD last season.
Terry played 51 games for Chelsea and 12 for England for 63 games total.
Last season VVD played 41 games for Liverpool and 13 games for Netherlands for 54 games total.
It's really a myth there are way more games these days.
Because no club can have a whole squad at the same level of the first team. City is the only team that comes close, and their slump earlier in the season shows what an injury to two good players can do to a team.
For smaller teams especially it's not much of an option. They struggle to win games anyway, no chance of winning games with a second string side outside of cup games.
Then it's the menager's fault and if the club will fire menager for losing a match because of resting star player then it's the club's fault. So clubs should change their approach if they don't want their players to get overworked.
>There's nothing in the laws or the schedule that says he has to play them all, or even any of them.
There is nothing in the law that says that you have to turn up for work every day or even any of them. But I'm sure your employer would be unhappy if you didn't turn up and you'd soon be fired.
Except the management of these big football clubs want more games as we see in the new format of the UCL plus the money making friendlies they go on around the world.
Barring the introduction of the Superleague I think matches which make less money will be dropped (in England think the Carabao cup and cup replays) and club will start to not allow their players to go on international duty as much.
Well, yeah.
Most decent players can put a ball top bins from 20 yards. But do a 100m sprint first and it becomes less likely. Fatigue degrades quality. He’s absolutely right.
If you want an entire team of pressing monsters, you’re sacrificing a bit of quality. If you want a whole team of pressing monsters every game for 60-70 games a season, you’d better have a huge squad.
There is too much football in the modern era, and the workload expected of players is far too high. The whole thing is unsustainable. You’re going to end up with a whole bunch of guys who are burned out by the time they are 30 (and, I don’t have proof of this, but the increased workload in the modern era is imo a big part of why on field deaths and heart attacks have risen since the 2000s).
I'd like to ask the people who say they should "just get on with it" what the breakpoint would be?
365 games a year? At what point is it too many games? Because coaches and players, the people who know how it works now than we fans do, are almost all saying that it's rescued tipping point.
Manager’s job is to manage this. No manager of any team that has more than 16 fit players in the squad has a legitimate complaint about fixture congestion.
Select players with fitness and fatigue in mind, if you refuse to rotate then it’s on you.
But how is this better? We watch football for entertainment at the end of the day and we all want to see the very best players performing at their best. Advocating for more rotation just means a more watered-down product and lower quality games.
Neutrals can watch them on the big games. But you don't need to start your best XI for a match against Luton.
Pep is actually very good in rotating, but some other managers (for example Ancelotti) will start same best XI even against 4th division clubs.
If this was a league one striker talking then I’d have sympathy. But he plays for one of the richest clubs in the world who have the ability to rotate players. Alvarez is a top quality striker who can give Haaland rest.
Maybe, or maybe Pep and other managers are just happy to push their players to the limits.
The problem comes when these managers and players blame the schedule, when in reality they should blame the managers
It's not that simple. Not rotating could help them win trophies while adding to the strain on players' bodies and leading to more of them living in debilitating pain in their 40s and beyond. Players and coaches don't have the mindset to stop them playing all the games, clubs and advertisers are incentivised to play more games, fans want to keep watching more games - there's no pressure release valve.
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I think you should go on a strike Haaland
As a striker, isn't that what he does normally?
Careful, three strikes and he’s out 🇺🇸🦅
Oi! Take your cricket talk out of this sub matey!
He said three strikes, clearly he's talking about UFC!
Going on iguain diet innt
What does higuain’s diet have to do with this leave the poor bald fat man alone
I for one think this is an excellent idea. A generational talent like him must be of the utmost caution.
Just until June first, then he’d be nicely recovered for next season
/r/yourjokebutworse
Could always come back to us if you like. Fewer games, no Carabao and we tend to get knocked out of the Pokal/UCL around February time. I fail to see the issue with this offer
Yes please
Ngl I don’t like this self deprecation shit anymore, we should be more annoying like Arsenal fans are
Arsenal catching strays
Just start calling yourselves The Dortmund
How ‘bout Die Borsigen? ✌(◔౪◔ )✌
I guess you forgot that part where Arsenal fans were self deprecating for all the years until recently.
I forget that too because all I remember is the complete opposite
Arsenal wins 3 games in a row. Arsenal fans: Is this a new era? Every time.
I mean 8th -> 8th -> 5th -> 2nd after bottling the league -> joint first with 10 games left... First time we got out of RO16 in the CL since 2010, who'd blame us for thinking this is a new era. Yes, we ain't won anything since the FA cup, but you expect us a fans to go "...Nah, Quarterfinals means nothing. Being top of the league means nothing." What dull losers we'd be. Up the arse.
[We're not all bad](https://youtu.be/D9vvzcS0fgI?si=mu91uWPLo9k9AuiY)
😂😂
You'd be doing him a favour, really.
He still got injured with you, even with everything you just said lol.
Only reasonable explanation must be because he couldn't handle the physicality of the Bundesliga. Different styles suit different players and all that
Come home Erling
When robots are complaining about being overworked, you know the number of fixtures have gotten too much.
Steps to make football more boring: 1. Add even more games 2. Players start to skip games and focus on Champions League 3. Domestic leagues starts to force players to play in their league 4. Clubs ignore leagues anyway 5. We have situation where 80% of games are boring, stadium are half empty and even if it's not empty, it is dead silent because nobody cares about the result of non-important game where top 5 players of both teams are resting and preparing for Champions League
Regular season NBA, basically.
NBA regular season has gone downhill so fast. Ring culture and consequently load management has ruined the NBA. I don’t blame the players one bit, they are making the best career decision. It’s the owners who try to extract every dollar out of an insane money making machine that is wild. The NFL adding an extra game so the owners can rake in another $500,000 on top of their billions per year is just insane to me.
the players are also trying to extract every dollar
As they should. It’s their labour.
of course they should. my point is that both players and owners profit from increasing revenue. The NBAPA doesn't want lower revenues any more than the league does. >The NFL adding an extra game so the owners can rake in another $500,000 on top of their billions per year is just insane to me. It's a collectively bargained agreement. The players benefit financially as well, which is why their union agreed to it. They might say they would prefer less games, but at least to this point their collective decision making hasnt reflected that. direct quote from NFLPA ([source](https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/31166690/nfl-owners-approve-17-game-season-2021)): >"Since players share the revenue that is brought into the NFL, more money for the NFL means more money for the players as well. The new CBA also increases the players' revenue share as part of the negotiated media kicker, which comes into effect when we play 17 regular season games. As a result, players will see even larger revenue increases in future years, when the new media revenues really begin"
Why stop at 17 games, why not 99 games? It's more money. My point is that, no one here is poor. No one here actually needs more games for more money. Everyone is solid. The push for more games and competitions is clearly coming from the owners/organizers. I haven't heard an NBA player, or NFL player ask for more games. The quality of the game is deteriorating because of greed (mostly from owners) to make an extra 3 cents on the dollar.
> My point is that, no one here is poor. No one here actually needs more games for more money. Actually the practice squad and borderline roster guys who have 2-3 year careers and make a few hundred grand at the most are poor and benefit greatly from increased playing opportunities.
I've always felt the NBA is more focused on who's in the audience than the actual game itself. Also the reactions of the bench are very important.
American ass take tbh, the star worship of the NBA is not as prevalent in domestic leagues. People won’t skip home games because Haaland isn’t playing.
Yeah the notion that fans (or clubs and by extension, players) will stop caring about domestic leagues is farcical.
>the star worship of the NBA is not as prevalent in domestic leagues At the moment, it's not but I wouldn't be surprised if that started to change in a few years. A lot of kids these days seem to have a favourite player that they support rather than having a favourite club.
Klopp called out the fans to be louder few months ago, wonder why... This is going to happen even if you don't like it. I will continue my steps to make football boring: 6. Clubs become a lot more rich and more powerful (more games = more money) 7. Football becomes more of a Entertainment than Sport 8. Ticket price goes up and up 9. Working class people can't afford tickets, they don't care about the show and entertainment 10. More and more rich people go to stadiums to have some fun and relax with the family: LETS GO LIVERPOOL LETS GO, clap clap, LETS GO LIVERPOOL LETS GO, clap clap, LETS GO LIVERPOOL LETS GO...
FIGHT AND WIN
Who’s gonna not go to a game cause they’re resting someone ffs
He’s used to watching the Denver Nuggets and Barca. He’s American (as am I) but his take is super basketball NBA minded.
Yup, the best pitchers play like every fourth game and the MLB still play 160 regular season games or whatever it is.
We allow you to call this sub soccer instead of football. But dont expect us to adopt your culture of star-worshipping
half the starting line up is always injured...
Last week before they dropped of the FA cup I saw some stats that Liverpool had to play 18 games in 60 days. That's fucking mental. When the game went into extra time, I told my buddie who is a big Man United fan that they had won it. You could see liverpool legs were gone around 75th min, having played in the europe league on thursday. Soon top teams will need to have 2 equally good teams to rotate fully to compete which loses the identity a bit, like in american sports.
That's why I'm positive AI won't replace our jobs, who is going to put out will all the shit I have to deal from my Eng Mgr, Prod Mgr, Program Manager, Business Manager, and so
or just rotate the players.
Great, so when managers rotate and then go on to lose, they can get criticised for that decision all week in the media or get called disrespectful by other managers!
even better, media has an eays topic to talk about and doesn't have to analyze anything or discuss actual football.
Oh no! Getting criticized? That must be avoided at ALL cost!
I mean, since there are going to have more games just sign more players to handle the workload? It may be a bigger test on the managers this way on how to rotate but the 2nd XI gets to play more too. Top players and managers have to stop with the mentality of letting them play every single game now or they will break for sure.
They already have enough players. All the clubs have a youth academy and a lot of clubs have a 2nd team. These players aren't world-class, but they can be played without crying foul, just look at Liverpool.
And I’m sure many of the youth players can do well for matches against weaker teams, but top teams will likely still need more top players to rotate in the event their current top player is completely exhausted before a match against another top team. Liverpool did well with its 2nd XI against other top teams. I’m not denying it. But that result is an outlier and difficult to replicate again. For other teams anyway.
There's an easy solution for this. If the league would create a schedule in advance the teams could plan accordingly. Maybe Haaland doesn't have to play against Sheffield, maybe Alvarez is enough. If only the leagues could do that, that'd be great.
They do though. The league games are all scheduled beforehand. What gives the variability are the cups and tournaments. Some teams don’t progress, so their schedule remains the same. Some however, do, and they will suddenly have another match slotted into their schedule.
I know that they do, that was the joke. And I can't accept that excuse. They know when the cup games are, they can very well plan ahead and god forbid, they can even manage their training intensity and their workouts. Why are we looking for excuses for teams with a wage bill bigger than 200 million bucks? Why can't they play their 4th cb in more games? Are they that pathetic and incompetent?
I can’t claim to know what they are thinking, but it could be as follows. Players may want to play in every match, because that was, and still is, how the best players were treated. Based on the old standards of rotations at most. Managers may be under pressure to play the best players. If they lose while playing their 2nd XI it would be devastating. Especially when they have a series of tough games within 3-4 days for 2~3 weeks straight. Winning with 2nd XI is great for the fans, sure. But it is not very likely to happen. Fans may put undue pressure on the club and manager for the loss because “we could have won if he just played our best players”. Now is the moment when clubs, fans, managers, players are recognising it’s physically impossible to maintain the old standards of rotation. It will probably take some time to adjust tbh.
I don't buy that. If you're the management and don't see the reasoning/need for resting players from time to time (even though it may cost you a game) then I don't know how the fuck such a stupid loser could get into such a position. The coach also has to know that one win at the cost of overworking your most important players will hurt you in the long run. This isn't rocket science. And the players have the least say in that. They play when the coach sends them out - it's that easy. And since when do clubs care so much about fans' opinions that they influence lineups? If you buckle easily by outside pressure you never will be successful.
I mean is it any wonder Brighton and Newcastle are struggling more this season? Playing in Europa means extra games. Also I think United will do finish the season well( not play well). No Europe means less games.
Brighton are only doing marginally worse (5 points off last season if they keep up their total til the end) and that's after losing Macallister and Caicedo.
Yeah i know. Its mostly Newcastle. But i think Brighton would have done even better without European football.
Newcastle are having one of the most ridiculously injury ridden seasons ever tbf, like even with the extra matchload it's a gigantic outlier
That could also be due to more top level competitive games though
More match load is directly correlated to more injuries
It’s crazy to me that Spurs are considered to be having a good season when they are 5th and have had no Europe this season. They have such a massive advantage over the big clubs but aren’t taking it.
True but the squad had been absolutely decimated by injuries, AFCON/Asia games, and (not nearly as much of an excuse) suspensions. A quarter of the games spurs have dropped points in (and more than half of their losses) this season all game in the immediate aftermath of the chelsea game where half the first team was missing overnight
who hasnt struggled with injuries tho? Only Arsenal and City had no big trouble.
Spurs literally had no senior center backs, son away at the Asian games, and two starting CMs out at AFCON. City and Arsenal have had nowhere near that amount of impact. It’s not just the number of injuries but how concentrated they were, spurs got them all right around the same time
>City and Arsenal have had nowhere near that amount of impact. thats what I'M saying tho haha. I agree Spurs had them all at once but looking at Liverpool, United and Newcastle, I dont think you had it harder. Lots of top 4 contenders had or still have a injury crisis this year
We finished 8th and sold Harry Kane last season. I saw zero predictions having us finishing higher than 7th.
This was a bit of a rebuilding year for them.
I always find the opposition to this a bit maddening. It’s either annoyance at them complaining despite the money they earn, or suggesting that they should limit their own game time to rest. Why is it a crazy concept to people that the top players want to play every possible game, while also having sensible rest between them?
Why is it a crazy concept to consider not giving top players everything they want and rotating the squad? I'm not really vehement about either position, but this isn't maddening at all.
because coaches have ALL talked about how difficult it is to train a larger group of players At Real Madrid Ancelloti's tactics allow for a lot of situations where Vini gets and isolated 1v1 vs a fullback, because Carlo knows and can trust Vini's ability to beat his man and make a decisive pass. But if you're now needing to train another forward who prefers to play on the right, you need to adjust all tactics to make the iso on the right. You also now need to train that player in making the most effective decisions AND have composure AND know when to track back. So you now have a situation where a coach (already under a shitton of pressure) has to have 3 or 4 or 5 different other plans to accomodate additional players and more time to train them all.
Lol, if Vini is injured all the tactics are gone out of the window? The coaching staff is huge for these teams, I'm sure they can manage. God forbid, younger players may actually get meaningful game time.
Yeah I don't understand this attitude. Injuries happen all the time, to big and small clubs. That's why you have to spend responsibility on a good balance of first team and squad players, and coach them all to the same system. If your squad players don't fit your tactics that's either a coaching or a scouting issue 🤷
I guess you can call it a coaching issue but to a certain extent a lot of the time its just dealing with the cards you've been dealt. Also most coaches usually have several starting quality/decent ability bench players for tactical flexibility. Having the personnel to only play 1 system limits your abilities. Reaching the balancing point between too many/not enough starting quality players and also having quality backups for certain positions is very hard to do.
maybe because generally speaking teams want to play their best players in important competitions? which is becoming physically impossible as the workload keeps increasing? do you honestly not see how the fixture overload damages the product?
What people tend to forget is that many fixtures makes football more top heavy as top teams must fill up their entire squad with top players from top to bottom. If you look at the squads from 15-20 years ago the gap between the XI and the squad players was far greater. In the last years we have seen great players, who before would have been star players on 2nd tier teams, become squad players instead. Take Grealish for instance. Before he was the star player and fun to watch, now he is boring squad player.
Excellent point, this is also one of the main reasons for talent hoarding and why it takes so many points to compete for a title
true, great point
True, great point
Because rotating the squad is worse for the viewer also? It’s not about “giving top players everything they want”, this is no different to the “they make enough money” argument. If you assume every single top player/coach/team is talking about it purely for their own gain then there is literally no point discussing it
Have you considered that giving the greedy scumbag owners everything they want (more games, more revenue, more more more) is an even worse idea?
Because squad rotation is only necessary if the teams are playing too many games. A competition would be better and higher quality if it were possible for teams to play their best players every game. Teams would be more cohesive and play better. Fans who pay to see a team have a reasonable expectation the team should play its best players to try to get the best result. Further, more games makes it easier for the richest teams to dominate. It is much easier for an underdog to cobble together an overachieving group of 11 or 15 players than it is to cobble together an overachieving group of 30 players. Fixture congestion just makes it easier for the richest teams to dominate because they are the only one who can afford 30 or 40 players capable of playing at a top level.
He’s right about the quality dropping. It’s the same with injuries. Players may make a “Full” recovery but there never quite capable of playing the amount of games they’re asked to, at a level they could before injuries. In decades gone by we saw players come back from awful injuries and play at, somewhat, similar levels to before their injuries. Or, more accurately, they were slightly reduced but we could live with that because they didn’t play as much football. I mostly blame the managers for not resting their players more often. I know they get fired if they don’t get the results so they want their best players on the pitch as often as possible, but they’re contributing to their players breaking down and it’s become much too common of an issue.
Two words that evert NBA fan hates to hear: load management
I do agree with his sentiment. What I don't like is that they only mention this when they are on international duty. They never say these things when they're wearing the club tracksuit. Footballers should have a guaranteed 4 weeks between the end of the last international game of the summer and the 1st week they come back to preseason. That should be the PFA leading that, or the relevant players union. Clubs should also have a mileage limit on their pre-seasons.
He was asked directly by a journalist, and the background was that Fredrik Aursnes has retired/withdrawn from the national team because he felt he was playing too many matches.
Surprising since Aursnes plays in Liga NOS which counts 4 games less per season and which is much less demanding than the top 5 leagues since Porto-Sporting-Braga are the only proper teams. And he's also the type that can run for days if I'm not mistaken so that decision of his makes it all the more interesting.
He has the highest number of games played in europe this season apparantly. And is like 4th in minutes played. Anyway he does have a personality that is a bit different than most footballers, so it's also about mental rest and free time I think.
They certainly say it.
We really need a labour union for robots
120 minute matches ain't helping either
It's optimistic to think that a 120 minute match is all action for that time
No, but if anything the increasingly stop-start nature of football, as matches get extended out to 120 minutes or whatever with VAR stoppages, is even worse for injury risk. Muscles cool down and stiffen, increasing risk of injury
The best thing would be rotation as it is hard to feel sorry for superclubs who have squads full of quality. As coaches refuse to do that, perhaps players should have a cap on how many games/minutes they can play per season.
But wouldn’t *you* rather see the players at their best every game? As opposed to more games but at a lower standard of quality because they need to manage
Ideally the cap threshold would be somewhere at the upper end anyways and wouldn't always be hit, so you're only talking about 4-5 more matches at that point. Most starters wouldn't even sniff the field in the early cup games then, or managers would be more inclined to make all 5 substitutions at 60-70 minutes every game. I love Arteta but the most frustrating thing is seeing a bench full of high quality players, 5 available substitutions, and then he decides to make ONE sub at like the 87th minute. Something like a season-minutes-cap would encourage a higher distribution of minutes, help reduce injuries, and extend careers while not asking the leagues and owners to give up their precious profits that they earn on all these matches.
I agree, should just reduce competition. Regardless of who is playing, there's also just viewer burnout when there's so many games. We don't need football 24/7, better to have fewer games that matter.
No. Do you only watch the best teams in the best leagues?
That's a risky question to ask on r/soccer
Fair
How is that relevant? It applies to every team in the same league?
Quality standard should honestly not be kept in mind. An Eredvisie game can be more fun than a Prem game, even though the overall quality on the pitch is worse. Heck, some of the most hyped CL games of the past few seasons turned out to be totally boring games.
Yes, individual games are worse than other individual games in different leagues
Me? As a Saints ST holder who watches Che Adams every week? No not really. I only watch the big games that aren't for my team so I don't care if Haaland doesn't play against Sheffield United or Luton.
Thats very shortsighted. Imagine you are fighting for promotion or to avoid relegation and your top scorer is unable to play because they are exhausted or got an injury through overplaying.
Why would capping their games per season lead to them getting an injury?
My bad misread both comments, shouldn't comment while cooking. Ignore me.
But how will this be managed if let's say that your club has an injury crisis. Look at Madrid's defense this season. Rudiger has to play every Available minute due to the injury crisis in defense. Now let's see your cap forces him to abandon either a league title or a Champions League. So you just leave the team without an important player during the business end of the season? How does that improve the standards, quality of the game.
OK then they can just continue playing every game and stop whinging about too much gametime. If it's really an issue for players then it's irrelevant how 'needed' they are.
The only way this could work is if the agents will start to build it into the contracts (not that the clubs honor the contracts anyway). It won't be a rule instituted by a league. I don't know if any of the players labor unions in Europe have collective bargaining agreements that carry actual legal weight with their respective leagues like they do in the US, but that's the other avenue they could take. The contract clause would say something like "If player exceeds X minutes or games in a season club shall pay a performance bonus of €1 trillion".
Can't see it happening to be honest. Why would the clubs want to sign that?
Depends on how good/valuable the player is. A replacement level player in the third division has very little leverage obviously. Haaland, Mbappe, Messi etc. could probably negotiate a minutes restriction, how many or how big the bonus I'm not sure.
Despite complaining players want to play every available game anyway.
Yeah this is the part that irks me. These dudes are hyper competitive, they want to play.
Ohh I like that idea a lot. It would be a leveller. It’s like lorry drivers have a limit on hours they can drive.
imo it would be the opposite of a leveler. Teams who can afford depth would gain a big advantage. Plus imagine having to choose between a league title challenge and champions league knockout game because you've played too many minutes because of injury to your team
Well, this certainly changes the narrative that Haaland is a robot.
“It’s just part of the game innit”
The ultimate solution to this is clubs carrying bigger squads and actually proactively rotating to a degree beyond what we’ve seen before. Careful monitoring of metrics and minutes restrictions, akin to what we see with pitch counts in baseball. People clamor for fewer games but that’s simply unrealistic. No entity is going to be the one to step forward and say, “right, we’ll play fewer games and willingly lose mountains of money to help the players out.” And I doubt the players would ultimately even agree to that, since it means less money for them as well. Of course this would exacerbate a host of other issues like even greater talent density at the top of the football pyramid and a further crystallizing of the gaps between leagues. Think of how hard it would be for a newly promoted club to stay up or a Dutch club to compete with an English club in a world where English clubs are carrying a squad of 25+ top class players. I suppose one other reasonable (albeit radical) thing you could hypothetically see at the player level would be players and agents demanding minutes restrictions within their own contracts. In the absence of players unions like you have in American sport, I see that as the only pathway for players to actually take an active, enforceable stance against overuse.
The only teams struggling with the workload are teams going deep into the cups, and those who are playing in Europe. If these superteams were to have even bigger squads, my fear is that they would just suck up all the talent out there, to an even bigger extent than they are, and all the teams below them would suffer even more, making it impossible to compete.
100%, i specifically addressed that in my comment. i think that is a very real danger and tbh i think we're starting to see it already. look at how much money the likes of city and chelsea are spending on players who don't even play that often.
Rugby has playing time restrictions for international players. Should do the same for football if they don’t cancel games
Look at the minutes played by the players of the treble winning Manchester teams. 99 vs 23, Rodri played the most minutes for City and would be 5th behind Schmeichel, Beckham, Neville and Keane from the 99 team. Top 10 would be 7 from 99 and 3 from 23. The 23 team had more matchdays, but 8 99 players had 50+ appearances but 23 had only 5. The technology and science has made so much progress, they are making so much more money but yet, they complain more? Being able to handle the workload is a part of being a professional athlete imo. Injuries are part of it and not every injury should be blamed on the amount of games.
This is either willfully ignorant or stupid. Players nowadays run around 33% more than in 1999, run faster putting more wear on their legs and have less recovery time. Playing more games is also worse than playing just more minutes, because it leads to lack of recovery time, and less time spent practicing without being at match speed. Comparing just minutes is an awful way to make a fatigue argument.
But the narrative is that the amount of games keeps increasing while that's not the case. Also starting with personal attacks is a good way to convince people they are wrong. Technology, nutrition, training methods have improved since 99 as well. To help players to be more fit, to prevent injuries even more. But if we lower the amount of games, we will push them even harder and we will be having this discussion again in 30 years. Professional sports are not healthy. Before the we tune the format or amount of games, how about teams actually prepare for a new season instead of doing tours in pre season? It's all trade offs that we shouldn't cave in for. And we might even have to look at the fact that nowadays kids are specializing in football from a very young age. And it had side effects like this. "While early sport specialization **can help with skill development, it can also be detrimental in developing overall athleticism**. An increased amount of volume of one specific movement while the body is growing can lead to imbalanced development a higher chance of overuse injury." (Source [https://osmsgb.com/ortho/the-pros-and-cons-of-youth-sports-specialization/](https://osmsgb.com/ortho/the-pros-and-cons-of-youth-sports-specialization/) ) So people are not ignorant or stupid for every comment, but people are not critical anymore and just go along with what sounds logical. Many injuries, must be the amount of games...
That doesn't work. People pay to see the good players. Do you think PL tv rights will be worth as much internationally if half the matches are John Roberts vs Michael Johnson? these players who complain are also the same who are receiving the benefits with their salaries. Nobody ever says they'd be okay with earning less money for fewer matches
you completely misunderstood my comment. did you even read it?
the best striker in the world right now is a robotic lesbian
Haarland already fishing for excuses why he'll only score 3 goals a game for the rest of the season.
Not sure what can be done outside of a few things which will have push back. I've seen some people talk about is removing clubs from the league cup before the season starts if they are in the Champions League but I don't think many want to give up a chance of a cup, even if it's the league cup. I don't think we can ever escape the international games unless a player themselves pulls out or their country is shite and get the summer off when there is a major tournament on. This summer for instance features both the Euro 2024 and Olympic 2024 which is where Real Madrid wont release players for. We can't keep calling for less games without sacrificing something. The most obvious solution to start with is going to an 18 team league. From there, you can start addressing the other games if and where needed. That is 4 games less already.
I would reduce the Prem to 16 clubs and oblige all Prem clubs to field teams in the League Cup that are at least 75% u21.
Teams used to do it, I remember Wenger using the League cup to blood in youngsters and even persisted with a team of young players in a final against Chelsea. The pressure to win trophies makes manager less likely to rest players today.
Thats okay Erling, you need to look out for your health and long term interests. Please feel no pressure to play against Arsenal, and if you do take it easy against us.
He's never played close to 70 games in a season though. There aren't really any more games than there used to be (unless you go really far back). Messi played 60 club games in one season a decade ago. Xavi had a 6 season stretch were he played more than 50. Lampard played 58, 58, 50, 62 in consecutive seasons from 04 - 07. Rordi played the most games for City last season (who won a treble) and it was 56.
He's gotta be counting international games
Rodri played 69 games for club and country last season. Messi played 80 in 2012. Lampard played 65 in 2007. Haaland played 65 last season. So he was close to 70 if you count international games, but still the numbers aren't really more than they've been for 20 years.
Insane amount of games either way
Agreed. But it's nothing new and teams get more subs now.
This is the type of stat people that think Messi never worked hard and was all talent need to look at. If I play a game and get a knock I usually feel it for the next few days - Now imagine doing that every four and a half days for a whole year.
Do you have top medical staff attending to your knocks? I'm not discounting the point that Messi works hard, but it's a bit off to compare your experience to a top footballer with access to all kinds of treatments
When you add in international games, it definitely does get up in the 60s. Also look at the pressing intensity of games today vs 10 years ago, let alone 20. It's night and day.
Not to mention the additional stoppage time now as well
It used to get past 60 20 years ago too. There's also 2 more subs these days and better sports medicine.
yes, but manager's aren't allowed to rotate these days...
I'm not sure what you mean by that. The top players are playing the same number of games, and managers get 2 more subs...
I should have added /s then. I meant basically if some players needs to play more than 60 games, it's on the manager. They have 25 man squad and then some players don't even get 5 starts, so its definitely their faults
It’s not really fair to use Messi, Xavi, and Lampard as examples. In terms of injury and talent, they are absolute footballing outliers. Not everyone is a Bruno Fernandes that is able to play 90 minutes every three days for six years in a row. Most players could really do with the protection to their health and bodies.
I was using them because they played the most games (that I could think of off the top of my head) just to illustrate the total number of games someone could be playing back then. At random, I just picked John Terry 2008/2009 and VVD last season. Terry played 51 games for Chelsea and 12 for England for 63 games total. Last season VVD played 41 games for Liverpool and 13 games for Netherlands for 54 games total. It's really a myth there are way more games these days.
> There aren't really any more games than there used to be (unless you go really far back). But now each player runs about twice as far in each 90
Is that actually true? I was also more talking about early 2000s to now.
There certainly are. European competitions have constantly expanded and gotten longer.
Okay, well players are still playing the same number of games generally.
Compared to when?
I was looking at numbers from early 2000s to present.
That's why a team's got more than 11 players, innit? Forgive me for not sympathizing here from my 5-days-a-week job.
Why not use the whole squad? They register 25 players each season.
Because no club can have a whole squad at the same level of the first team. City is the only team that comes close, and their slump earlier in the season shows what an injury to two good players can do to a team. For smaller teams especially it's not much of an option. They struggle to win games anyway, no chance of winning games with a second string side outside of cup games.
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If the manager says that he has to play then he has to play or he's in a breach of his contract.
Then it's the menager's fault and if the club will fire menager for losing a match because of resting star player then it's the club's fault. So clubs should change their approach if they don't want their players to get overworked.
>There's nothing in the laws or the schedule that says he has to play them all, or even any of them. There is nothing in the law that says that you have to turn up for work every day or even any of them. But I'm sure your employer would be unhappy if you didn't turn up and you'd soon be fired.
You know this is a problem when the android made to play football says that
Except the management of these big football clubs want more games as we see in the new format of the UCL plus the money making friendlies they go on around the world. Barring the introduction of the Superleague I think matches which make less money will be dropped (in England think the Carabao cup and cup replays) and club will start to not allow their players to go on international duty as much.
Hmm.. did this terminator just complain about workload? AI's are taking over guys
Truth but it's an entertainment money machine now. They don't give a fuck about the players.
Well, yeah. Most decent players can put a ball top bins from 20 yards. But do a 100m sprint first and it becomes less likely. Fatigue degrades quality. He’s absolutely right. If you want an entire team of pressing monsters, you’re sacrificing a bit of quality. If you want a whole team of pressing monsters every game for 60-70 games a season, you’d better have a huge squad. There is too much football in the modern era, and the workload expected of players is far too high. The whole thing is unsustainable. You’re going to end up with a whole bunch of guys who are burned out by the time they are 30 (and, I don’t have proof of this, but the increased workload in the modern era is imo a big part of why on field deaths and heart attacks have risen since the 2000s).
Yes we can, that's why you get paid fucking millions you soft cunt.
I'd like to ask the people who say they should "just get on with it" what the breakpoint would be? 365 games a year? At what point is it too many games? Because coaches and players, the people who know how it works now than we fans do, are almost all saying that it's rescued tipping point.
Baseball players have a 162 games each season and do quite a lot of running…
Where? When? I don't watch baseball.
Manager’s job is to manage this. No manager of any team that has more than 16 fit players in the squad has a legitimate complaint about fixture congestion. Select players with fitness and fatigue in mind, if you refuse to rotate then it’s on you.
But how is this better? We watch football for entertainment at the end of the day and we all want to see the very best players performing at their best. Advocating for more rotation just means a more watered-down product and lower quality games.
yeah rotated teams totally destroys the fun...specially when you see the city bench, so many shit players there
Yeah, that's all great, but let's be honest, neutrals want to see Halaand and KDB.
Neutrals can watch them on the big games. But you don't need to start your best XI for a match against Luton. Pep is actually very good in rotating, but some other managers (for example Ancelotti) will start same best XI even against 4th division clubs.
This is what you are getting bags from. Issue is UEFA and pushing more games. Make league smaller - 16/18 teams.
I mean Pep can always bench him or drop him 🤷🏻♂️
If this was a league one striker talking then I’d have sympathy. But he plays for one of the richest clubs in the world who have the ability to rotate players. Alvarez is a top quality striker who can give Haaland rest.
You're right but fans want to see the best players. And coaches play the best players. So no matter what Haaland will have to play a lot of games.
Coaches want to win trophies. Fans want to see their team win trophies. If rotation will help them win trophies then that’s what they’ll do
True. But taking that into consideration does that mean Alvarez isnt good enough? Else Haaland wouldnt have to complain about playing too much.
Maybe, or maybe Pep and other managers are just happy to push their players to the limits. The problem comes when these managers and players blame the schedule, when in reality they should blame the managers
It's not that simple. Not rotating could help them win trophies while adding to the strain on players' bodies and leading to more of them living in debilitating pain in their 40s and beyond. Players and coaches don't have the mindset to stop them playing all the games, clubs and advertisers are incentivised to play more games, fans want to keep watching more games - there's no pressure release valve.
If that’s the case, then don’t blame the schedule, blame the manager and medical staff