What is the FIFPro player workload model and why does it matter?
FIFPro is the representative body for professional footballers. Its report into extreme calendar congestion and the effect it has on player health and wellbeing has fuelled suggestions, led by prominent players such as Rodri, the Manchester City and Spain midfielder, that strike action is not beyond the realms of possibility. At a time when most sports are looking to better protect their athletes, think concussion guidelines in Rugby and athlete welfare charters in Olympic sports, why is football being accused of moving in the opposite direction?
There are many contributing factors to player health and wellbeing in professional football with clubs better equipped than ever to ensure appropriate support is in place. Players have access to some of the best chefs and nutritional support, medical attention, treatment and recovery practises, expert coaches and high performance facilities curated to ensure they remain at the top of their sport for as long as possible. Further, psychological support, once a marginalised discipline is now a key part of how clubs support their players using both sporting and clinical disciplines of the profession.
The growth in support that clubs provide for their players in the form of facilities and expert practitioners has been possible because of heightened revenue from lucrative broadcast deals and foreign investment. The influx of revenue, however, relies on growing the visibility of elite Football to a global audience. This need has driven the expansion of competitions such as the Champions League and Club World Cup which in turn is contributing to the growing physical and mental pressure experienced by players. It is a strange paradox.
A new competitive landscape
In 2022, the FIFA world cup was played for the first time in November and December, a move from its traditional place in the calendar during the Northern hemispheres summer months and at the end of the European domestic season. For teams competing in Europe, where arguably the most talented players reside, this new schedule represented the middle of the domestic season. Furthermore, the Champions league has been expanded to include an additional four teams, taking on a league rather than group format in the early stages of competition. In 2025 an expanded Club World Cup competition will be held in the United States. These additional fixtures are on top of the regular domestic league and cup competitions.
Outside of sanctioned competitions clubs will arrange pre-season tours in overseas destinations. These are less about preparing the players for the season ahead and more about satisfying sponsors and providing opportunities to grow their brand in emerging markets. The result is that players are now playing more matches, with less recovery and at a higher intensity than ever before, something that FIFPro has documented through its player workload model and detailed in the recent report linked here https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=FIFPRO+workload+management+report&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8.
Fixture congestion
The FIFPro report highlights the impact that fixture congestion has on recovery by quantifying the number of back-to-back games players contest. A back-to-back game scenario is characterised by less than 5 days separating two games in which the player featured in both for at least 45 minutes. The report showed that in season 2022/23 Enzo Fernandez and Lautaro Martinez played 70% and 76% of their matches in a back-to-back format, respectively. When a five season analysis was conducted on Raphael Varane, 58% of matches were contested in a back to back scenario with an average game exposure of 89.5 minutes.
Back-to-back games and the deleterious impact they have on recovery and health is exacerbated by shortened off season periods and a lack of in-season rest. FIFPRO has suggested that all professional players should have at least a 28-day break during the off-season and a 14 day (minimum) in-season intermission. To take the Varane example, over the five year analysis, only two seasons were interspersed by an off-season break of more than 28 days (30 and 33 days) whilst no in-season breaks were afforded.
Fixture congestion has different implications for different players. For those more mature in their playing career it can represent a challenge in terms of recovery. Research has suggested that for parameters such as blood borne markers of muscle damage, full recovery following strenuous exercise can take more than three days. The restitution of muscle force has a faster recovery timeframe however, this assumes no further stress is applied to the player in the intervening period. Between back-to-back games coaches need to schedule recovery and organise training sessions where they can prepare players for their next opponents, which may involve international travel. It is schedules like these that underpin the findings by FIFPro that 53% of players felt more likely to suffer an injury because of fixture congestion. This is not just subjective. The report details the significant burden that injury poses in the big five leagues of European Football with Serie A topping the list with nearly 700 injuries.
For younger players the challenge of fixture congestion is no less of an issue. Injury is still a major risk factor however, the lack of training exposure exacerbates the issue. Football has never quite embraced the notion of long-term athlete development, or LTAD for short, in the same way that individual sports have. This, however, is semantics. Football is acutely aware of the importance of taking a slow and cautious approach to developing precocious young talent. In the early stages of their professional career young players are often exposed to more training than competition, training with the first team but being on the fringes come match day. The integration of Wayne Rooney into first team football whilst at Everton is testament to this approach. Indeed, it helps explain why older players played less minutes before the age of 20 than their modern contemporaries (see next section for more detail).
With the increasing number of back-to-back games, young players are not being exposed to training of sufficient intensity nor volume to develop the type of strength, and fitness qualities that support a long term career in the game. The space between matches does not allow for it. Training is slower, more tactical, and technical in nature, omitting a critical part of their development.
An example schedule between back-to-back games might look like the below:
Wednesday evening Champions League match away from home. Players travel back with the team after the match, landing in the early hours of the morning, potentially crossing multiple time zones. Upon landing players travel home.
Thursday (match day -2). Players report to training base in the mid morning or early afternoon for a recovery session and treatment by medical staff. Research reports that this will follow a poor and interrupted nights sleep as a result of travel and arriving home in the early hours of the morning.
Friday (match day -1). Squad training and preparation for Saturday’s opponent in the domestic league competition.
Saturday afternoon, domestic league match. If the match is away from home it may necessitate travel the day before, after training on match day-1.
It is easy to see how young players where a high percentage of their games are played in this back-to-back format may not able to attain a training stimulus sufficient to protect them from injury and build a base that supports a long term career.
The historical perspective
A historical comparison is made in the FIFPro report to give context to the demands placed on modern players. Before the age of 20, Jude Bellingham of England and Real Madrid had played 14,445 minutes of competitive football (excluding friendly matches of which there would have been many). To put this in perspective, by the of age 20 David Beckham had played 829 minutes, Steven Gerrard 2853, Harry Kane 4010 and Michael Owen 9187. Owen has since spoken about how his early experiences of professional football manifested in a host of muscular injuries later in his career. The only player to have come close to Bellingham was Wayne Rooney who amassed 10,989 minutes by the same age. The difference in minutes amassed by Rooney and Bellingham before the age of 20 is equivalent to 38.4 games, or a full Premier League season. How many of these minutes were key to his development versus being of benefit to his club and their quest for results is open for debate.
Notwithstanding changes to this year’s Champions league format, the competitive landscape and number of competitions is not dissimilar now than when players like Rooney, Gerrard and Kane were young players. What changed?
Pointing fingers
Despite expanding competitions and an increased number of back-to-back games as a result of fixture congestion, there are plenty enough players to allow sufficient recovery at the individual level. If clubs and managers rotated their squads to a greater degree, we would likely see a drop in the number of back-to-back games that players contest and a reduction in the amount of playing minutes for young players. To clarify the point, there may still be the same number of games and in the same period of time, however the number of players who contest them would be greater because of squad rotation.
English Premier league clubs name a 25-man squad each year, 8 need to be homegrown, that is, developed at a club registered with the FA whilst players under the age of 21 do not count in the 25-man squad cap. A different squad can be named for UEFA competitions and domestic cup competitions. More squad rotation equals more recovery time which should, in turn, equal a better team performance. Given clubs have the available resources, why do they risk player welfare by not rotating their squad and providing more rest to their best players?
The obvious and likely correct answer is because they want to win. Sure, for competitions deemed of lesser importance clubs will rotate and field those who are younger, have less experience and considered fringe players. For the most prestigious prizes, however, the best players will likely play as much as is possible. Indeed, clubs have been chastised in the popular media for fielding teams of seemingly lower ability in competitive matches, despite everyone on the field being professional athletes. The premise being that it degrades the competition overall.
Clubs likely have a similar opinion. Players are contracted for a period of time that allows the club to maximise their utility whilst reducing the risk of losing them to a free transfer. If a contract is too short, players may elect not to sign a new agreement and leave as a free agent. Too long and the utility of the asset may diminish, that is, no longer perform for the club and hold limited or no resale value. Clubs are not recompensed for prolonging the career of players who go on to have their best years at a rival club. Resting key players beyond what is absolutely necessary to maintain their performance levels and limit the risk of injury from a business perspective, therefore, is ill advised.
If not the clubs, perhaps governing bodies should act, but how? One option would be to amalgamate the best domestic competitions and create a global format in its stead. A league in which Celtic compete with Liverpool (you can see my bias here), Boca Juniors, AC Milan, Marseille, Barcelona, River Plate, and LA Galaxy. The competition would remove the need for the world club competition and European Champions League, involve fewer but more high quality matches involving the best players whilst allowing optimal between game recovery periods. Smaller squads would result in fringe players filtering down into the remaining domestic competitions, which would, as a result, receive a boost. Broadcast companies would have to navigate the issue of how to accommodate viewers across multiple time zones however this is not insurmountable. I know many an Australian willing to get up at 2AM to watch their favourite premier league team.
Research and development
If the idea of a global super league isn’t to your liking, there are other ways in which the problem (if indeed you perceive there to be one) can be addressed. On this point, whilst the FIFPro report focused on the game at an elite level, the problem of congested fixture schedules happens at all levels of the game albeit without the requirement for international and multi-time zone travel. As such, any changes implemented should benefit all players, something a global super league may fall short of.
Organisations like FIFA and UEFA could impose rules on the number of minutes played, number of back-to-back games permitted per player per year and a minimum length for the off-season break. This may be stratified so that younger and less mature players are protected to a greater extent. Clubs would need to adhere to these rules and share the data to prove they were doing so. The objective markers would need thorough research to ensure they were efficacious in achieving the intended outcome. This, however, is no different than other industries which carry a significant risk of injury. Construction companies must comply with a host of workplace safety regulations to keep their staff safe; transport companies limit the time drivers spend behind the wheel without a break; corporates offer staff a range of options in which they can take unscheduled leave to protect their wellbeing.
To impact the broader game, all clubs must make a commitment to collecting and sharing quality data on playing minutes, recovery time and injuries, in a format that can be used for research purposes. Such initiatives are already underway but should be global in their reach. Clubs themselves can, by partnering with Universities, invest in research that looks at effective recovery practises and the impact that, at the local level, fixture congestion is having on injury. Some great work is already happening in this space. Dr Liam Harper has significantly improved our understanding of the impact extra and added time has on performance whilst Prof. Hugh Fullager’s work in sleep hygiene is helping clubs manage travel schedules in a more effective way. Dr. Matt Whalan and Dr. Stella Veith have advanced our understanding of how to better detect and act on precursors to injury.
Where competitions are expanded such as the UEFA European Championships or Club World Cup, games could be shortened to 80 minutes to limit game exposure. Extra time could be removed and replaced with a ‘direct to penalties’ rule. The number of permissible substitutions could be expanded.
As useful as the FIFPro report is, a coordinated response is needed to drive change. Without this clubs will focus on enhancing on-field performance at the expense of recovery and player welfare. In parallel, the game will continue to capitalise on opportunities to increase its market share of the sport entertainment business by growing the number of games and competitions. A player strike may be the catalyst for change the game needs.
