Rodri is the 2024 Ballon d’Or recipient for best male player of the year. He is also the the most outspoken critics against the increasingly congested soccer calendar.
The Manchester City and Spain midfielder issued a warning that the lack of downtime was detrimental to players’ performance and health. Then, just a month before the 28 October award ceremony, he tore his ACL during a seemingly routine run in a Premier League game against Arsenal.
Though such injuries have occurred throughout the history of the sport and aren’t necessarily linked to overplaying, Rodri’s season-ending injury became a visual representation of the physical toll of modern soccer at a time when the busy match schedule is facing legal challenges and the possibility of strike action.
Top footballers are now routinely playing more than 60 games per season for club and country, while the game is getting faster and more intense. Injuries are on the rise. Already pushed to their limits, some players say FIFA’s newly expanded Club World Cup, to be held in the United States next year, is the last straw.
Players say they are "at breaking point, that they are at the limit, that it’s actually too much," Alexander Bielefeld, from global players' union FIFPRO, told The Associated Press.
The new Club World Cup is a supersized version of what used to be a short tournament with only seven teams. The new edition includes 32 teams from around the world and will be held every four years, starting next summer in the United States from 14 June 14 to 13 July. As its name suggests, it’s envisioned to be club version of the World Cup for national teams.
That means top players will have a monthlong tournament on top of their domestic league season three out of every four years. With more games also added to the Champions League in Europe this season as well as the next World Cup in 2026, the soccer calendar is filling up quickly.
"It’s something that worries us because we are the guys who suffer," Rodri said in September, just days before he was injured. He said players may have no choice but to refuse to play if the trend continues.
He’s not the only one feeling frustrated.
In a post on X last year, Raphael Varane, a member of France's World Cup winning squad in 2018, said the schedule was putting players’ physical and mental well-being at risk.
"Why are our opinions not being heard?" asked the 31-year-old Varane, who retired from the national team two years ago and from playing altogether in September this year following an injury.
In July, England and Real Madrid midfielder Jude Bellingham described the schedule as "crazy."
"It’s difficult on the body — mentally and physically you are exhausted," he said after England was runner-up at the European Championship.
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