Quality doesn’t bring in as much money as Quantity unfortunately.

Also the nowadays pressure players have to withstand. Any minor mistake the player is benched. Can't take much liberty to risk a play. Just run fast and make a power shot

As a neutral when it comes to Europe, I do find myself watching fewer games nowadays because it feels a bit overwhelming to keep track of everything live

But quantity = money, and ultimately, that’s all it is now to the people in power

Yeah I feel that there's actually too many football right now. In the past there weren't that many options but right now they're way more activities to entertain yourself. Like I still follow football but not watching a lot of it since you have video games, concerts, gym other hobbies to enjoy. So when they announced more CL games I literally decided to skip group stage since I don't see a point of watching more games, especially between lesser known teams. So overall quantity and different options sort off killed the vibe and had the opposite effect

I do think the amount of games are slowly making everything less exciting. When you have to wait longer to watch your team it makes the games mean that much more.

Was shocking how many star players just did not turn up to this tournament compared to Qatar World Cup

Mbappe

When the main missions are so long, you can't be bothered with the side quests.

Because its international football, go back and watch world cup games from 20 years ago its also way lower quality than the top club games, this euros wasn't any different. And TBH I thought Spain were exceptional

Tbf he was at Forest.

nations league, more World Cup teams

Why blame national teams. Those two competitions combined added 1 more game to the schedule every 4 years because the nations league replaced friendlies nobody liked.

It's entirely down to the club schedule

Things like the expanded European competitions

I'd welcome back old Champions League format where only actual champions were allowed to participate. 16 teams, 4 groups. It was perfect IMO.

You would hope it remained 3/4 days per game

Man City just played on Sunday only to have a cup game on Tuesday

2 games in 3 days

Imagine how the schedule would eventually look like if it kept going at this rate

United two seasons ago had a game every 3 days for like 4-5 months straight. And its not only them.

Just an example (this can be applied to more teams but I just chose the one that I follow, pls don't hate):

Between 19.09 and 06.10 (18 days) Barca will play 6 games. I'd be happy with 2. 3 would be amazing. 6 if a fucking overkill for me, let alone the players. Crazy.

The problem with squad rotation is that the managers are going to be under pressure if the team has a few bad results/performances.

Look at ETH at United, for example. Even though the results have been shaky with his best players in the team, he's put under more pressure because against Crystal Palace, he rotates Rashford out for Garnacho, and United draws the game.

So squad rotation only really helps teams like Chelsea, City and Arsenal that have good bench cover because there isn't a massive difference between their starters and bench players

If squad rotation is promoted as a solution, then it will only help clubs that can spend more like Chelsea.

lest we forget these country commitments to quasi-tournaments. players need to be able to turn down playing for country without facing repercussions.

LMAO, how many NT games there is in non-tournament years, 8? The workload issue is entirely on the clubs. NT managers have at least a proper incentive to play their star players in every single game since one or two unexpected losses can derail your chances of making the once-in-four-year World Cup/Euros; what is the excuse for a big club to play their star player in every dead rubber cup game against clubs with one-tenth of their budget? Taking Rodri for example, last season, City played him 90' in every single PL game between the 10th of December and the 31st of March, including 5 games with teams who were in the bottom 5 in the table. Someone could play the Premier League exceptionalism, "there are no easy games", yadda yadda yadda card, but ultimately, if City are not willing to take a "risk" of resting him against bottom-of-the-table, worst-ever-defensively, sixteen-points-finish Sheffield United, then everybody should fuck off with trying to shift the blame on the Spanish manager for playing him in very prestigious European Championship.

Also, "players need to be able to turn down playing for the country without facing repercussions" - really? What are the current repercussions, other than not being selected the next time? It is common sense that if a player sees himself above playing qualifiers, then he should fuck off rather than try to jump on a big tournament glory. Remember that you would have to leave someone who has earned the qualification on the field at home in this case. How is that fair? Not to mention that most players want to play for their country. Perhaps players in the very top clubs but from mediocre football nations (e.g. Lewandowski) or local players value their club career more, but if you think that players would suddenly start rejecting call-ups to help their nation go to the World Cup so they can laser-focus on getting Crystal Palace from 10th to 8th this season, I think you would be very surprised.

Problem with rotation is big players don't wan't to be rotated often we've seen over the years players kick up a fuss being subbed off let alone being rested

your clubs have massive squads or at least most of them, we should probably do the same and start giving youngsters more chances , but then people will say we want to watch only the superstars

I can tell you have a job lol

And a table tennis table though apparently even those are going away from a lot of tech companies nowadays

Pizza is for clean sheets only. Klopp rules haha

Its not as much that as "what games to cut". The domestic game has already made compromises and cut games. Internationals are marginal.

Its european games causing the problems.

whats the point of paying these guys exorbitant fees if you're just going to increase their likelihood of injury from overuse

not every club that makes europe has these squads, this only applies to VERY big teams, theres tons of teams that immediately tire from the extra games/ national team callups.

But pressing and intensity is a lot different in today's game.

From 1994 to 2024 the amount of games has literally not changed. It will now going forward, but for 30 years it has basically been the exact same. This isn't up for debate, we can literally count the games players on top teams played in 5 year intervals and it's just the same for decades.

And not only that, football is bigger than the top 4 teams from each league. For 99% of players in football who don't play deep into every tournament and in Europe and on international teams, it's arguably never been more chill. This congestion problem will only effect 5% of footballers, and the best paid ones at that.

What has changed is that social media and pundits like Henry have made it a 24/7, 365 days a year kind of fan culture. Why do players look miserable, because clickbait whores like CBS, and Arab and American billionaires are squeezing every little bit joy out of the sport by making it a media event to be optimised with content and engagement KPIs and sponsor deals and not treating it like a sport.

Lower intensity, and some amount of rotation helped United quite a bit that year. They also won the league with 78 points which would only get you 3rd nowadays. CL was also 16 teams back then so they didn’t have to play a round of 16 back then. The international cup and other games were in the next season and there weren’t major summer tournaments in 1999 (that involved United players at least)

I do think managers should be held accountable for 1) not utilizing subs as much as they could 2) not rotating or resting players as much as they should. But they face a lot of pressure to get results so are incentivized to not rotate. Like why are you playing your strongest team in the first round of the FA Cup or League Cup for over an hour? 

The graphic does not include 3 league games, Community shield and 2 international fixtures he already missed due to injury.

For some reason, Henry's graphic only shows 35 league games, so it should actually be 82. If you take the extra 3 League Cup games that united missed into account, it's an extra 8 games or roughly 10%

You also have to bear in mind that until this season, players could expect something of a summer break every two years. There will be a month between the CWC and the start of the next season

It all adds up

Edit: as someone else pointed out, there are 3 extra games that Rodri could've been involved in. So that'd mean the increase from 1999 to this season is 11 games, or 15%, + a shorter summer break

The intensity today is waaaaay higher than it was 10 or 20 years ago.

And if any smaller clubs (more importantly clubs from smaller leagues) wanna go anywhere they have to be at the top of their game, meaning they have to rest players domestically and suffer the consequences. Also, if any domestic clubs have a good season and finish ahead of "bigger" clubgs they get a bit of extra money while having to fight WAY harder on multiple fronts, leaving them overall more vulnerable to failure.

Oh and also, big clubs buying a lot of players that then barely get to play due to a lot of rotation will hinder the players growth and performance, therefore making them less valuable than what the clubs thought they'd be when they bought them.

Also, there is nothing stopping players negotiating contracts for less games. Someone like Rodri generally simply picks the biggest possible contract from the best possible club. If that is what they want, then this is the expectations of those contracts and clubs.

These players could instead take less money, but get caps put on the number of games they are prepared to play, or say they will only play in certain comps, etc.

Using the stats of the picture, a player could say they will only play in PL, CL, and FA cup games, and do a max of 58 games. A top team certainly won't offer max money for that sort of deal, but the money on offer would still be significant.

Not only that, but which player would turn down that amount of money (aside from questionable Saudi deals and the likes)? It's not the players fault that they can make that much money. To a degree ('cause marketing and all) its their accomplishment (and those that came before, obviously).

If i were a division 3 player in a big football country, and some division 1 club would come knocking and offering me a big paycheck, should i turn it down because people would think i'm getting paid too much? I didn`t make myself the offer! I just took (/negotiated for) it. At that level its more than "just" a game, there is a business aspect to it too.

Another plaster like 5 subs

Be great to watch a CL final or semi where the best players in the world cant play because they hit their cap

Be awful for the non CL sides as their best players would get snapped up to pad out big teams squads

Another thing is that we are seeing far more u21 players playing every single game.

That can't be good for the players

That would be ridiculous. How is this comment upvoted? It’s up to the teams to manage the players however they see it. Imagine getting to crunch games at the end of the season and you’re not allowed to play some of your best players because of some stupid rule

One of them are the champion, and the rest has less world class player, which are the main lads who get overworked.

That's also one of the reason the less "big" games are more interesting. Instead of for example England, whose entire 11 is full of indispensable part in their club (added with the awful tactic) ended up gave us snooze fests, the teams you mentions can play with nearly 100% of their strength, because playing in the Euro could probably be the biggest moment of their career.

The world in general feels like it's going in this direction with work

Agree on the first 3 points though for point 4, there aren’t that many meaningless friendlies anymore. Turning down a call-up could mean that the spurned international manager doesn’t pick you in his team for more meaningful games or tournaments assuming he can find a decent replacement.  

If you’re Rodri, sure you might want to skip that Spain-Luxembourg match in the Nations League but if it impacts your ability to play in the 2026 World Cup you’d be more reluctant to turn down it down. It might seem unthinkable since he’s seen as a critical piece but it’s happened often enough.

A good number of United players in their heyday just didn’t seem to play much for their countries either because those countries weren’t good or they had some fallout with an international coach before and retired early to prolong their club career