Cristian Romero’s week on a plane and other shock findings from FifPro report

Professional football players are being pushed “beyond their limits” as global union FifPro highlighted the “excessive workload” many top stars faced during the 2023-24 season.

FifPro’s player workload monitoring report said over half of the 1,500 players monitored last season faced high workload demands, with nearly a third in squads for more than 55 games in a season.

Argentina’s Julian Alvarez, formerly of Manchester City, made a total of 75 appearances for club and country last season during a 14-month campaign that concluded with the summer’s Copa America and Olympics, while Phil Foden, Luis Diaz and Darwin Nunez were not far behind.

Additionally, the expansion of major competitions including the Champions League, the Club World Cup and the World Cup has led FifPro to warn that some top players will likely face playing in more than 80 competitive matches for club and country in 2024-25 and 2025-26.

The demands of international travel were also cited as a factor in physical and mental fatigue, with Tottenham and Argentina defender Cristian Romero spending 211 hours and flying more than 162,000km on cross-border flights during the 2024-25 season. Romero spent more than a week travelling internationally, covering almost half the distance to the moon across 26 international trips.

FifPro said that the increasingly packed calendar has left some players with as little as 12 per cent of the year to rest, which is the equivalent to one day off per week. FifPro has already launched legal action against Fifa over the sport’s “unworkable” calendar.

The three European club competitions - the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League, have been expanded to 36 teams this season and Fifa has expanded the men’s 32-team Club World Cup, which kicks off next June in the United States. The first 48-team Fifa World Cup then takes place in the United States, Canada and Mexico in 2026.

Alexander Bielefeld, FifPro’s Director of Global Policy & Strategic Relations, said: “The gap between those who plan and schedule complex international competitions and those who play and experience them has never been bigger, as was highlighted again by the latest remarks of players and coaches at the beginning of this season. It is crucial that we bridge that gap and start to prioritise player-centric health, wellbeing and performance.”

Maheta Molango, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), said Erling Haaland and Mohamed Salah’s brilliant early-season form has illustrated why it is important for footballers to get proper rest periods during the summer - neither were involved in international tournaments in the close season.

“I found astonishing the difference there was in terms of the feedback from the people who had a proper holiday, from the feedback of the people who did not have a proper holiday,” he said. “The body language and the words they chose in talking to us was so different.

“I think for us in England, we have a very clear example, or two examples, probably one is Haaland. It’s very nice to go to a dressing room and hear someone say to you, ‘I was missing being back. I was missing being able to train again. And I’m pumped up, I’m motivated. I’m here’. And that was in pre-season.

“Now you see the result. He is back to being the machine that we saw when he first joined us in England. It’s probably something very similar to Mo Salah, he had a proper rest and you can see it’s the best version of Mo.”

Includes reporting from PA