Are there too many matches?

[matt]

More and more managers are complaining about the amount of games in modern football (for instance Ancelotti and Sarri). European cups, midweek league games, national team games, they say injuries are rising and players are exhausted.
So, do you agree that there are too many games during the season or not?

If yes, how can the situation be fixed? I think they have a point. First, like FIFA may soon approve, i'd reduce national team windows to two per year, maximum three (one big in June, and another one in November or March). I would get rid of useless tournaments like the Nations League or the enlarged Club World Cup.

Then, i think Serie A would be better with 18 teams, but for leagues with more depth like the Premier League this may be controversial.

European Cups are more or less ok with this structure, but soon this will change (more games...). That is totally unnecessary.

That said, if more games means more money, less games is the opposite, so players and managers must realize this.

[rpo.castro]

There are too many games but it will increase because money talks.
And there is no excess of matches for NT. They are so few.
Leagues are too big, then you have stupid league cups, or two legged NC.

[Lorric]

Everyone talks about player welfare when wanting to cut games, but here's the thing... More games means you need bigger squads. More players earning a living out of the game. So it's a double edged sword.

Don't you dare touch the international games!

Italy can feel free to miss another World Cup though if they want to!

[matt]

Don't you dare touch the international games!
Italy can feel free to miss another World Cup though if they want to!

No one wants to touch or ruin World Cups (except maybe FIFA) and EUROs.
Also a few managers in the Premier League talked about this problem (too many games), like Guardiola and Klopp.

[Dragonite]

No, there aren't too many matches.

Plus the premise that a player should play every minute of every match is wrong. Clubs have squads of 25+ players, they're not supposed to use always the same players. More matches mean more opportunities for everybody in the squad to play.

I'm with Lorric here, don't you dare "touch" the international games (national teams and international club football). Unless by "touch" you mean EXPAND, never reduce.

If they really must reduce something, then do it in domestic football.

[krdel]

I do think that there are too many matches, not too many competitions, but too many mathes in them. There are 273 (+qualifiing) matches in Champions League (17-19 per team), there used to be 61 (9 per team). There used to be 17 matches in World cup (4 per team), now there are 80 matches (7 per team). There used to be 4 matches in Euro (2 per team), now there are 51 matches (7 per team) etc etc.

The domestic leagues and cups are fine, they have not changed much, some of them even shrinked.

The only competition i find totally unnecessary is Nations League.

[Ricardo]

I think that there are too many matches per player, yes.

I think that contracts should hold clausules that a player can only play once a week. Maybe in exception (once a month/5x per year?) a midweek.

The European competitions should be seperate teams: A real european league, with their own teams of players that do not play in the domestic leagues.

National windows are oke as they are now.

[Todor]

To add to krdel's post: The qualifiers for the WC and the Euro consisted of groups of 4 and 5, now they are 5 and 6 + the Nations League adds 6 more matches per country in a two-year cycle.
Even the FIFA World Club Cup is now extended from a single match to a one-week competition.
I believe it is worse for the players in the top teams of the smaller nations than it is for the big clubs. Clubs like CSKA-Sofia and Ludogorets already played 12-14 matches in the European competitions, plus 14-15 domestic league matches, plus 2 domestic cup matches and they have to play further 3 more rounds of domestic football for a total of 33-34 matches since the summer with much thinner squads. Plus their Bulgarian players also took part in 3 international breaks and 7 more matches with the NT.

[bbi]

there are more aspects to this questions.

Are there to many matches for the viewers?
Yes I think so. Having to many matches will certainly make some of the games less important.

Are there to many matches for players ?
I don't think so. Teams should better manage the players available. There are players that don't get to play more than 500 minutes a whole season. Plus players can also adapt. And players that can adapt to player every 3 days even if probably at a lower intensity will prevail. Football has always changed and different profiles of players became more/less important.

[rpo.castro]

there are more aspects to this questions.

Are there to many matches for the viewers?
Yes I think so. Having to many matches will certainly make some of the games less important.

Are there to many matches for players ?
I don't think so. Teams should better manage the players available. There are players that don't get to play more than 500 minutes a whole season. Plus players can also adapt. And players that can adapt to player every 3 days even if probably at a lower intensity will prevail. Football has always changed and different profiles of players became more/less important.

If there were too many matches for the viewer, they wouldn't increase. They increased and want to increase because there is room for that, mainly outside europe.

For the players of course there are much more matches and they can't play every 3 days with good performance.
They can't just play at half pace. Well they can do it in small uncompetitive teams, but then they will have lack of pace for european cups.
If a guy is used just 500 minutes while the other has 2000 must be by some reason, no? Because he isn't as good as the other and with the weakest player, chances of winning drop.

Having bigger squads would be another massive blow in medium-small teams and leagues. Top teams can afford bigger squads and could easily get the remaining good players existing in smaller teams. Smaller teams would be chop off all interesting players and having big squads of leftovers and cannon fodder.
This would lead to an elite with good players, and the other clubs useless

[Tazmania]

National leagues should be a maximum of 18 cubs (34 games); ECA said that the expanded UCCs from 2024 were based on clubs playing a ratio of roughly 1/3-2/3 UCC-domestic with a maximum of 34 domestic league games.

UNL just uses FIFA int'l dates which already existed, so they have not contributed to having extra games than before.

[krdel]

National leagues should be a maximum of 18 cubs (34 games); ECA said that the expanded UCCs from 2024 were based on clubs playing a ratio of roughly 1/3-2/3 UCC-domestic with a maximum of 34 domestic league games.

34, that would be fantastic. Then our boring leagues would finally be expanded.

[Francisco]

There are too many games, but going against the majority, I'm for cutting the National teams games.
FIFA and the continental Confederations want more and more National Teams games. For me this is awful as National football is neither fair neither natural. League teams are natural, since players are free to choose the team that hires them, but in terms of National teams we have many situations that players either have a good chance, or if they have bad luck and were born in a country with a weak national team, will never be able to win the World Cup. And then you have countries with so many good players (example Brazil) that end up "exporting" players to other nations changing the natural strength of that national team (this feels like cheating). So its better to reduce the National teams games, and downsize their importance.
The best competitions in the World are the best European Leagues and the European Champions League. The World Cup doesn't deserve to be considered better than these.

[Greyn]

There are too many games, but going against the majority, I'm for cutting the National teams games.
FIFA and the continental Confederations want more and more National Teams games. For me this is awful as National football is neither fair neither natural. League teams are natural, since players are free to choose the team that hires them, but in terms of National teams we have many situations that players either have a good chance, or if they have bad luck and were born in a country with a weak national team, will never be able to win the World Cup. And then you have countries with so many good players (example Brazil) that end up "exporting" players to other nations changing the natural strength of that national team (this feels like cheating). So its better to reduce the National teams games, and downsize their importance.
The best competitions in the World are the best European Leagues and the European Champions League. The World Cup doesn't deserve to be considered better than these.

I have to disagree with that. National teams football are the only chance for people from poorer countries to enjoy football at the highest level. There are already not many international games in the calendar and people from countries like let's say North Macedonia or Albania have to wait many months to watch top players live at the stadium. Clubs from these countries can't qualify for the group stage of European Cups, but they can qualify for major national teams tournaments like World Cup or EURO. Football is for everyone, not only for people from rich countries who have opportunity to watch top quality football nearly every week.

[Dragonite]

Football is for everyone, not only for people from rich countries who have opportunity to watch top quality football nearly every week.

If you don't mind, I'll get the beginning of your last statement, "football is for everyone", to say that any attempt to reduce the number of matches should also impact EVERYONE.

The Club World Cup doesn't impact everyone, it only impacts the SEVEN clubs that participate on it.

National teams football or international club football also don't impact everyone, they just impact the players that participate on them. Although it's a lot more than SEVEN clubs, it's still a small minority.

The only changes that would really impact everyone would be in domestic football, so if any change will happen it should be there.


I also don't think that FIFA should just say that "clubs are forbidden to play more than X matches per year" (X = 40? 50? 60?)

Every federation should have the autonomy to decide how many competitions they want to have and how long they should be.

Example: If Brazil wants to have its state championships AND the national championship too, they should do it. FIFA has no authority to tell them "you play too many matches, don't play state championship anymore and cut your domestic league in half".