Qatar 2022 has absolutely wrecked football’s schedule to an extent that might change football

But for the soccer addicts, aka the people who need their almost daily fix of the beautiful game, the season only ended about five days ago when the UEFA Nations League’s group stages finished. Well, technically those were only the first four matchdays with 5 and 6 set to take place in September, just after the transfer window shuts. But still, for the addicts and the players, that’s when the 2021/22 season ended, five days ago. But for Kevin De Bruyne, Virgil van Dijk and a host of other stars, they were nothingness games of football.

Yet for the large part, the football was slow, ponderous, it lacked any real energy or drive to it with players playing like they were playing a game of football after spending the whole day playing hundreds of games of football. Which is exactly what the truth is. Kevin De Bruyne, ever so apt and direct, pointed it out beautifully when he said "For me, the Nations League is unimportant. We have to play those matches, but it's a kind of practice campaign. Everyone has had a very tough season.”

Now sure, this means nothing in isolation but there’s more to come, so hold your horses.

Because you see, the 2022 World Cup is around the corner. Normally, in a normal world where World Cups were awarded to hosts with the best possible bid, the 2022 World Cup would be going on right at this very moment. Well not right now, but it would have, technically, started in two days and ended about two weeks before the start of the new season. But since it was handed to Qatar, and the country is insanely hot in the summer, we get a winter World Cup.

Forget about a football but lives, it absolutely demolished lives for the entire world.  So when it comes down to a football calendar, it forced shifts, changes and then a compression. But that was two years ago, with football restarting three months into the pandemic. Of course, you do have to give those organisations some leeway because of bureaucratic nonsense but having two men’s international competitions in the space of eighteen months is absolutely insane.

Now add that to a normal 60 odd game season, international breaks, and then a UEFA Nations League at the end of the 2020/21, 2021/22, and 2022/23 seasons, and it’s inhumane. It means that someone like Kevin De Bruyne, or Virgil van Dijk or anyone from a European nation could potentially play 80 games in only the 2022/23 season with a three-week break. Of course, they won’t play every single game but they’ll probably play a majority which is around 70.

70 games across 10 months which will essentially mean playing a league season at full-pelt for four months, then playing a World Cup at full-pelt for your nation and then coming back to continue the league season at full-pelt with two dollops of international breaks in the mix. That’s topped off with the superb UEFA Nations League semi-finals, final and third place games, and then they get a break of a month(ish) before the season restarts in time for the new Champions League schedule and Euro 2024 at the end of that season.

You add that to the last six months and it would see that tally not just cross but go well beyond the 100 game mark and that is just downright ridiculous. Because even if you take that as 17 months of football it means 100 games over 500 days with 30, maybe 40, days of break spread across that period. Just let that sink in and imagine what the state of these players' bodies will be at the end of next season.

We're going to see new levels of domestic cup rotation. Random men from the street playing in the Carabao Cup third round. https://t.co/EJvmQGceAv

— Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ (@GraceOnFootball) June 19, 2022

But while true, it doesn’t mean they should be run into the ground for as long as they can and then repeat that with the new batch. It’s shocking the disdain and hate that the organisations of the beautiful game have for the people that make fans want to spend months on end watching Tv. Because in the end, flogging these players to play football, football and then more football while expecting them to produce magic day in and day out is ridiculous.

It, in the end, will reduce the quality of the program and force people to switch to something else as many TV broadcasters have realised this last season. But then again, in Bale’s words, “they (organisations) want to make more money and it’s a business at the end of the day. For player welfare, money needs to be overlooked and you need to look after the players because without the players, there’s no product.”