Too many minutes, too many withdrawals: football's workload alarm rings again
Five England regulars missed the latest international break, and the players' union says the calendar is breaking them.
Cole Palmer, Marcus Rashford, Declan Rice, Kobbie Mainoo and Tino Livramento all pulled out of the England squad before the window, according to BBC Sport. France captain Kylian Mbappe and Germany's Kai Havertz also withdrew. For supporters, it meant star names missing on the weeks when club football pauses and countries take centre stage.
The minutes behind those absences are stark. Twenty-five Premier League players called up by their countries played 360 minutes across four games during the extended break. That is effectively four full matches, back to back, with no breather.
Club loads were already heavy. Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk played 55 games for his club last season. Van Dijk, Rice, Aston Villa's Morgan Rogers and England captain Harry Kane each logged more than 4,000 minutes in all competitions in 2025-26. That is the equivalent of more than 44 full 90-minute games.
What makes this stand out is how familiar the warning sounds. Players and managers have been saying it for years. Rodri, Pep Guardiola, Heung-Min Son, Alisson and Manuel Akanji have all raised concerns about welfare and the packed schedule.
FIFPRO, the global players' union, sets 55 appearances as the maximum threshold for a sustainable elite workload in its annual report prepared with Football Benchmark. Its medical experts link going beyond that number to a higher risk of injury. In a survey cited by the union, 88% of high-performance coaches said no player should play more than 55 matches in a season.
The numbers suggest many already do. FIFPRO found that 54% of 1,500 players monitored in the 2023/24 season faced excessive or high workload. It is not unusual for some at the very top to pass 60 or 70 games when club, cup, European and international fixtures stack up.
Dr Dave Richardson, head of psychology, sports science and wellbeing at the University of Lincoln, told BBC Sport the elite schedule "is not sustainable". Research on sleep and recovery points the same way. Dr Chris James, a psychology lecturer at Cardiff University, specialises in the impact of sleep on sports performance, an area clubs now watch as closely as sprint data.
Maheta Molango, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, described the recent international withdrawals as emblematic of a "sick" system. His fix is simple on paper. He wants a mandatory three-week summer break, with phones off and boots off, followed by a three-week retraining period, essentially a proper pre-season block to rebuild fitness safely every summer. The PFA has long argued that fixture congestion is primarily a player wellbeing issue, not just a debate about the product.
For fans, this means a trade-off that is easy to feel. More games bring more late nights and bigger ties. They also bring tired legs, flat performances and star players watching from home in October.
The pressure is not limited to the men's game. FIFPRO has highlighted a workload imbalance in women's football, where top players face burnout from packed schedules and too little recovery, while others risk injury from too few competitive minutes.
With a World Cup year adding extra strain, FIFPRO has warned that deep runs across competitions increase injury risk. The question now is whether the calendar bends before more players do.
