“They are going to kill us,” Carlos Alcaraz bemoaned after beating Ben Shelton in straight sets at the Laver Cup. He’s 21 but already weary.
Athletes everywhere are stuck in a hamster wheel of endless matches as administrators gleefully ram the already-packed calendar with more matches, more tournaments. Their greed helps inflate the already fattened sponsorship pool, but like an overstuffed suitcase, the taxing schedule is on the brink of exploding, leaving players with very little choice and even less energy. Alcaraz, the French Open and Wimbledon champion, has already played 52 matches in 38 weeks in 2024, and his season will end with the Davis Cup finals in Spain in November.
“The ATP doesn’t care about our opinion. It’s a money business. It’s the longest season in sports,” world No. 2 Alexander Zverev said. The tennis season nowadays has barely an off season, with the 2025 jamboree starting with the United Cup in Australia on December 27.
UEFA, the European football governing body, trying to cash in on the lucrative club football scene, has launched an expanded Champions League, while FIFA’s revamped Club World Cup, scheduled to be held in the USA next June-July, has ballooned into a 32-team event from the preexisting seven-team, seven-match affair. The semifinalists of this year’s Champions League will play at least 14 matches (or 16 if they have to navigate the post-league stage playoff), whereas last season’s top four got by with 12 games. Manchester City teammates Rodri and Phil Foden, who lined up as opponents in the EURO final on June 14 this year, played 63 (5,456 minutes) and 69 (5,526) matches for club and country, respectively, in the 2023-24 season.
The global players body, Fifpro’s Football Benchmark Survey, indicates: “Some players are seeing their time off fall to as little as 12 per cent of the calendar year, the equivalent of less than one full day off per week, contravening international health and safety standards.”
Rodri suffered an ACL injury — long attributed to higher workload — in City’s recent Premier League game against Arsenal, only his second start of this season. A report coauthored by FifPro’s chief medical officer, Prof. Vincent Gouttebarge, in 2024, investigating the reasons behind the high percentage of ACL injuries in women’s football, stated: “The anterior cruciate ligament injury group made more appearances, had more instances of less than 5 days between matches, and had less rest time than the control group over a 28-day period preceding the injury.”
Rodri, prior to his injury, has been vocal about the pressure on the players. “From my experience, I can tell you that 60-70 [is no good]. Between 40 and 50 is the amount of games in which a player can perform at the highest level. After that, you drop because it is impossible to sustain the physical level,” the Spanish international had said.
Rodri’s suggestion to down tools has found agreement across rival clubs. Players are the main characters of sport, the sport business, or whatever we call it these days. Throwing more money or more rewarding contracts at them is not going to fix a physical burnout. But has anyone ever found a cure for sport’s never-ending hunger for more cash?
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