Football bodies must find a way to have more balanced competition calendars and at the same time offer enough rest and restoring periods for players approaching the breaking point without the right off-season, the footballer FIFPRO warned.
In his playerwork-free-road monitoring report for the 2024-25 season, FIFPRO provided proof of rising health and performance risks as a result of calendar congestion, in particular for players who participated in the Club World Cup.
Teams such as Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), Chelsea, Real Madrid and Manchester City had less than the 28-day recommended minimum outside season, while finalists PSG and Chelsea had less than two weeks of pre-season than half of the recommended minimum.
«The big problem you have in discussions around the calendar is that people here only look at seclusion and by competition to see if only a specific period that is usually a year,» said Mahheta Molango, CEO of the Professional Footballers’ Association and FIFPRO Board member.
«What those reports enable us to view the wider image and look at what happens in successive seasons. There you are starting to draw some interesting conclusions.»
No summer free for players
«You would like Cole Palmer, who is mentioned in the report, who, if he is lucky to be fit and is called up for the next World Cup, would go for three consecutive summers without a break,» Molango added.
Palmer played for England, which reached the Euro 2024 final, and Chelsea, who won the Club World Cup this year, to play with the 23-year-old for his country at the 2026 World Cup.
Since then, he has had two -person problems at the start of this season and the report showed how the ruthless schedule of football is in stark contrast to other large sports.
While American competitions such as the NBA and MLB guarantee their players a low season of at least 14-15 weeks when they reach the final, European football teams have barely three weeks to recover, creating a negative knock-on effect on players.
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«The timing of the World Cup club has had an extremely negative influence on the residual and repair periods of players and also on the retraining period,» said Alexander Bielefeld, the director of the worldwide policy and strategy at FIFPRO.
Physically and mental toll on players
The report showed how Achraf Hakimi played 53 games for PSG and Morocco in 2023-24, giving him a 32-day break out of season. But that was reduced to 22 days when he played 69 games last season.
Darren Burgess, the high -quality consultant of FIFPRO, said that apart from the physical tension, a very short outside season also requires a mental toll for players.
«It is a perfect combination that leads to, in the worst case, injury and at best a reduced capacity to perform,» he said.
Travel of players, especially during international breaks, was also emphasized in the report, in which many players are thousands of kilometers of clocks flying from Europe to South America or Asia.
Four competitions and 25,000 kilometers
FIFPRO gave the example of Chelsea’s 115 million pounds ($ 154.10 million) Signing of Moises Caicedo, with almost 25,000 km to play four games in 14 days before his club and Ecuador, which played 90 minutes in every game.
New Zealand striker Chris Wood from Nottingham Forest said that it was «of vital importance» that players had a recovery period to adjust the body before returning to training for the next match.
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«You play a competition on a Saturday and if you have international journeys, you come back to play for my country in New Zealand, I am sometimes three hours after ending a match for Forest on the plane,» Wood said.
“I am on the plane, ready to travel back to New Zealand. Recovery of the body, the muscular side of it, is not perfect, sitting in an airplane, even in most cases, when we get a lying curse.
«It does not give your body enough time to adjust or restore the extreme workload that you do from a game … It is a long way to travel. And then prepared and ready to train and go again three or four days later has a big effect on the body.»
Published on September 29, 2025
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