The Premier League has just returned from a three-week break, but for a sizeable group of its players there was no rest at all. Of all the Premier League players called up by their countries during the extended international window, 25 played the full 360 minutes — the equivalent of four complete matches. Thirteen of those players had also featured for their clubs at the World Cup.
The workload is not a one-off spike. Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk played 55 games for his club last season, and he is one of several players who passed 4,000 minutes in all competitions in 2025-26, a group that also includes England’s Declan Rice, Morgan Rogers and Harry Kane. All of them have started the current season on a similar trajectory.
Sports scientists and psychologists who study the elite game argue that this level of demand cannot be absorbed indefinitely. “It is not sustainable,” said Dr Dave Richardson, head of psychology, sports science and wellbeing at the University of Lincoln. “We will start to see more clamour when we are not happy with the quality of performances; the public pay to see high quality.”
The consequences are already visible in the way players are choosing which commitments to take on. Five players — Cole Palmer, Marcus Rashford, Rice, Kobbie Mainoo and Tino Livramento — pulled out of the England squad before the latest international window. Germany’s Kai Havertz and France captain Kylian Mbappe also withdrew from the recent international break. Palmer had missed the World Cup after struggling with chronic injury last season.
Maheta Molango, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, described the withdrawals as emblematic of a “sick” system. “When England see five players who need to withdraw when the single most proud moment a player has is to be called up for the national team, you just ask yourself, what’s wrong about the industry?” he said. “They love to play for England. They love to play for their national team. But, unfortunately, your body puts a limit to it. You cannot cheat biology.” Molango wants a mandatory three-week summer break, plus a three-week “retraining” period every summer.
Dr Richardson, who has worked with Liverpool on player care and psychology, believes that will be impossible to deliver within the current fractured system of governing bodies. “The problem is that there is no one body covering the playing schedule, and they all want predominance,” he said. “They are all vying for the spotlight and championing their product as the best. Without that overarching independent body, it may not be sustainable.”
Dr Chris James, an expert on the impact of sleep on sports performance and a psychology lecturer at Cardiff University, argues that men’s football is failing in its duty of care to players. “Particularly in the men’s game, there is a culture where you need to look like they are coping,” he said. “It is like going back in time, with attitudes to mental health. There is a lot of work you must break down that stigma, that mental health is an equal partner to physical health. I have more of these conversations in men’s football than with women.”
Players themselves take a more mixed view. Former England defender Matt Upson, speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live during the Nations League home game against the Czech Republic, said the extended early international break carries both benefits and costs. “It is nice to have that intense period together — you can benefit a lot with breaking down the barriers around the dressing room; the manager gets to work on the training field a lot,” he said. “But four games in this period is a lot at this stage of the season, after a summer of competing as well.”
His former England team-mate Paul Robinson accepts that provisions and preparation between games matter, but doubts that trimming minutes is realistic. “When you get to mid-season, it is about two days’ preparation for a game, and then two days recovery,” he said. “With so many games, the timespan that they have is much shorter. Managers say they don’t have much time on the training ground and that is understandable because the demands on a player are so much, and recovery days are just as important as the preparation days. But I think from a footballer’s point of view, the game schedules are not overly taxing if you can manage yourself in between the games.” Robinson also pointed to the hypothetical scenario of Norway and England reaching the Nations League final next summer: if their managers then told Erling Haaland and Harry Kane they had three weeks off after a long season, neither would simply accept it. “No chance. They are going to say ‘we want to play’. Players want to play in these games.”
Dr James, however, warns that the high of playing tens of games a season is only temporary, and that the lows — a greater risk of injury and the need to stay permanently switched on at elite level — are considerably worse. He says players are turning to coping mechanisms, such as using snus, to stay focused. “Football still does not really appreciate the recovery needed physically and psychologically,” he said. “Players need to be people. Mental detachment is much trickier when there is increased fixture density. True recovery is about stepping away from our professional responsibility. The physical load can lead to more injuries, which can have a greater psychological impact. That will add a lot of stress — who am I if I am not playing? They will then also be worrying about contracts. It’s about education — feeling good in the moment does not mean it is good for them. They might feel they are physically capable of playing these matches in a row, but mentally they may feel wrung out. This is where clubs can be doing a better job of educating players — the benefit of downtime. You must sell to players why this is worth something.”
Dr Richardson believes some clubs handle that better than others, citing Brentford as having a strong sports psychology team. Yet with the Club World Cup introduced, the World Cup potentially expanding and no indication of a reduced number of games in the Premier League, the domestic cups or Uefa competitions, there is no clear path forwards. “The players have got little control over the calendar. As we have seen, some of them will decide to step away,” he said. “That lack of empowerment is difficult — that and the fear factor of not participating, of losing the place in the pipeline. But if you play and get injured, you lose your place anyway. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”