Remember when football matches used to feel like an event?
You’d circle the date, debate the line-ups with mates, let the tension build all week. Then, when the 90 minutes were over, the buzz (or the heartbreak) would linger until the next one. That rhythm gave football its magic, the build-up, the game, the reflection.

Now? That rhythm’s been smashed to bits.

There’s football every day of the week. Monday night league fixtures, Tuesday and Wednesday Champions League, Thursday Europa and Conference League, Friday night openers, Saturday wall-to-wall, Sunday stacked with Super Sunday. Add in Nations League during the supposed “international breaks,” expanded Champions League from 2024/25, and FIFA’s new 32-team Club World Cup in 2025… and suddenly, there’s no room left to breathe.

More = Less

At first, endless football sounds like paradise. More chances to watch your team, more marquee clashes, more content. But what it’s really done is flatten the spectacle. When every night is branded as a “must-watch,” none of them feel like it anymore.

Football used to be like a three-course meal. Now it’s all you can eat fast food, constant, heavy, and eventually unfulfilling. There’s no time to savour a victory or mourn a defeat; by the time you’ve processed it, another match has already kicked off.

Money Machine

None of this is accidental. Governing bodies are treating football like a 24/7 product, not a sport. UEFA’s “Swiss model” Champions League will force clubs into at least four more group-stage games. FIFA’s Club World Cup expansion in 2025 throws a whole extra summer of matches into the calendar. Even the Nations League, essentially friendlies in disguise, was invented purely to fill broadcast slots.

The logic is simple: more games = more money. More broadcast deals, more streaming packages, more global audiences. But there’s a problem: more doesn’t always mean better.

Player Costs

This is where things get ugly. Players are running themselves into the ground. A FIFPRO study showed that elite footballers are now playing record numbers of minutes, with some clocking up 70 games in a single season. That’s insane.

Take Pedri, Barcelona’s golden boy. At just 20, he’s already suffered multiple muscle injuries, largely because he was run into the ground playing over 70 matches across club and country in his debut senior season. Or Kevin De Bruyne, one of the Premier League’s greatest players, who’s struggled with repeated hamstring injuries, injuries Pep Guardiola has openly blamed on the relentless schedule.

Even clubs stacked with resources like Manchester City and Real Madrid feel the squeeze. City ended last season having played 61 games, not including international duty. By the time they kicked off the new campaign, their players had just a few weeks off. Real Madrid, meanwhile, saw half their midfield wiped out by injuries before Christmas 2023. Coincidence? Not really.

Managers aren’t quiet about it either. Klopp, Guardiola, Ancelotti, and even national coaches have all warned the schedule is “killing” players. Yet nothing changes, because there’s too much money at stake.

Losing The Rhythm

This is the real tragedy. Football’s heartbeat has always been its rhythm: the weekend match, the midweek European night, the long summer anticipation before a new season. That natural cycle gave games their meaning.

Now? It’s a blur. Matches bleed into each other, narratives are rushed, and fans are left fatigued. The “big nights” don’t feel big anymore, they feel like just another entry in an endless conveyor belt of fixtures.

Why It Matters

This isn’t just fans moaning about “too much football.” It’s a question of sustainability. If players keep breaking down, the quality drops. If fans are too overwhelmed to care, the product loses its shine.

Football is at risk of cannibalising itself. The very greed driving these extra matches is damaging the thing they’re trying to sell. The goose that lays the golden eggs can’t keep laying forever.

We need to talk about scheduling, not in the abstract, but urgently. Because if the lawmakers don’t slow down, football risks burning out its stars, exhausting its fans, and losing the very magic that made it the world’s game.

And that’s something no one, not players, not fans, not even the broadcasters, can afford.

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