Former Arsenal and Barcelona forward Thierry Henry has criticised the football schedule – and says there are “too many games”.
The expansion of the World Cup, Club World Cup, and the Champions League means top-level players are being asked to play more games than ever before.
The Athletic previously reported that global players’ union FIFPro had issued its starkest warning yet about the amount of football the game’s stars are playing, saying this season will be the “worst ever” in terms of workload.
In its latest report, the union surveyed 1,500 players and found that more than half of them “faced excessive or high workload demands”, with almost one in six making more than 55 appearances, the cap most high-performance coaches would set, last season.
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Henry, 47, has taken issue with the calendar and believes Real Madrid and England midfielder Jude Bellingham is a perfect example. Bellingham was ruled out for up to a month after sustaining a muscle injury in his lower right leg in August after playing 42 games for Madrid last season and seven games at Euro 2024.
Henry is a member of the CBS football punditry set-up, where he provides analysis on Champions League games alongside host Kate Abdo and fellow former Premier League players Jamie Carragher and Micah Richards.
Talking on a media call to promote CBS’ coverage of the Champions League, Henry said: “I think for us, for CBS, it is just outstanding, to be able to talk about more games. But there is a but for me, because I’m going to go on the side of being a coach. Too many games. Too many games. As an ex-player, I don’t know how those guys do it. As a pundit. I love it. But as an ex-player and as a coach, it’s too many games.
“Bellingham is already injured. It’s tough to play a season and then go to the Euros and come back, and play national team; more games left, more games right, and then a FIFA club tournament at the end of the season. So as much as I want to see AC Milan vs. Liverpool and I want to see a Manchester City vs Inter, I want to see the best players on the field being able to perform whenever they can. That’s also part of the product, having the best players on the field still being able to perform all the time.
“So yes, it is outstanding for us, but if I was a coach, I don’t know if I would have found out outstanding. There’s a lot of games.”
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Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola suggested that the only way to reduce the number of matches in the football calendar is for players to go on strike, while his midfielder Rodri criticised the football schedule for not being “healthy.”
Guardiola’s counterpart at Manchester United, Erik ten Hag, blamed his side’s lengthy injury list last season to an “expanding” calendar and a “great overload” on Friday, while Bayern Munich head coach Vincent Kompany called for the number of appearances a player can make in a season to be capped while he was manager of Burnley last season.
“If you focus on the Champions League, it’s OK, the amount of games,” said Henry, who coached France to silver at the Olympics in the summer. “It’s when you add the Nations League, it’s when you add the FIFA Club World Cup at the end of the season. It’s when you add everything on top of everything.
“If you’re in England, you play the Carabao Cup. You play the FA Cup. It’s too much. If you look at one competition all the time and you isolate that competition, you’re like, oh, it’s OK. But if you are a great player, it is not OK because you play, as you would, and it’s exciting. “Don’t get me wrong, you want to be part of all those games. But I’ll repeat, you want to be part of all those games fresh and able able to perform and show who you really are to everybody. And that’s my only issue.
“When you isolate a point, it’s OK. But when you put them all together, do the math for a player that plays every game. So let’s not only talk about physically, let’s talk about mentally and what it does to a player to always perform and forget about the money and the outcome.
“I’m only talking about just the players and their integrity. It’s just what I’m saying. I know numbers but at one point the well-being of a player is also important. That’s that’s my only point.”
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(Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
