Players are pawns in Uefa’s war with Fifa to control football

Blink and you might miss it: this is the mid-season break for Premier League footballers, granted an approved period of time off the hamster-wheel of the elite game to rest their bodies for the never-ending cycle of club and international football that awaits.

Not everyone has been able to take advantage: West Ham and Nottingham Forest are among those with FA Cup third-round replays interrupting their breaks. For others, including the current top five, there is some respite – 11 days for Liverpool, 13 for Manchester City, just three games in January for Arsenal. Tottenham Hotspur have 12 days in which they will hope some of their seven currently injured players might be able to recover. Erling Haaland, and others among the Premier League’s cohort of the unavailable, are off for warm-weather rehabilitation.

This will likely be the last Premier League mid-season break. Already it is slated to be discontinued next season. It will be a victim of football’s biggest battle between competing powers – over control of the calendar and, by extension, the billions of pounds the game generates in the sale of television rights. The collateral is the fitness of its best players. The elite footballers might be paid in millions but their time to recover is being eaten away. They are compelled to play ever more to serve the power struggle at the apex of the game.

Even this mid-season break needed some compromise, although at least the will was there. As well as the Premier League spreading one match round across two weekends, the Football Association had to scrap FA Cup fifth-round replays and move the games to midweek. Of course, for those players called up to the Africa Cup of Nations and the Asian Cup, there is no such accommodation. From next season it seems like there will simply not be the time to stop playing football.

Richard Masters, the Premier League chief executive, warned in the summer that the changes coming to European football, and across the world, had placed huge pressure on the mid-season break. Masters’ predecessor, Richard Scudamore, persuaded Premier League clubs to adopt the measure in 2018, and it came into force in 2019-2020. Then it was washed away in the remodelled Covid season and, last year, the changes enforced by the winter World Cup of 2022.

Now it has been dealt a mortal blow. First, the expansion of the Champions League to eight group-stage games plus potentially an extra play-off round to reach the final 16. Then, the arrival of the one-month-long Fifa Club World Cup next year, and then once every four years. Finally, the expansion of the Fifa World Cup finals from 2026 has morphed it into a five-week, 48-team epic, gobbling up more of the summer.

Domestic football in an existential battle

All the pressure on English football’s calendar has been external. The Premier League, the Football League and the two domestic competitions have never asked for more games. Indeed, the Premier League has retracted, with the reduction of the top flight to 20 clubs in 1995 and the gradual scrapping of replays in most rounds of the FA Cup.

But now there is nothing more to give and domestic football across Europe finds itself fighting an existential battle against the designs of Uefa and Fifa and their ambitions to stage the most lucrative competitions.

All sides know the players cannot maintain standards without rest. The summer is ever encroached upon. This season has seen injuries to major players, such as Kevin De Bruyne, Haaland, James Maddison, Bryan Mbeumo, Joelinton and many others. While the reasons are different for every individual, the trend is a concern. It has come with the expansion to 100-minute games and the lengthy delays for VAR reviews that some feel have contributed to muscle injuries. It feels unsustainable. Something has to give – but what will it be?

Gianni Infantino, the Fifa president, has been clear about how he sees the future for domestic leagues across Europe and further afield. He wants them reduced and the benefit to Fifa is obvious. It can use the days that it frees up to expand the territory of its own competitions. For the leagues across Europe, that is unacceptable. They met at the end of last year to discuss their options and a reduction of members is not on the cards.

One intriguing development has arrived as a consequence of the European Court of Justice ruling last month on Uefa and the European Super League challenge, which made it easier for clubs to take legal action against Fifa. It would be an extreme measure although all options are on the table for the domestic leagues. The Premier League has more than 30 years of media rights growth and a track record that indicates strongly that broadcasters like its model. As for its 20 members, the majority outside the big six are more likely to vote for the cancellation of Christmas than a reduction in their numbers from 20 to 18.

From the perspective of the players, Maheta Molango, the Professional Footballers’ Association chief executive, has said that legal action may yet be an option. It has been notable just how quickly the game has reached breaking point on the players’ capacity to deliver the high-end game to which a global audience has become accustomed. Players are now speaking out. In Saudi Arabia on Fifa Club World Cup duty last month, Bernardo Silva said that energy levels were simply impossible to sustain as the number of games grew.

Elite footballers such as Bernardo at clubs like Manchester City, who compete deep into all competitions, could face an 86-game season from 2024-2025 onwards with rest times trimmed and trimmed as the demands created by the struggle for broadcast revenue increase. When a modest mid-season break can no longer be accommodated, it is hard to conclude anything other than that the game has a problem.

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