Barça injuries and football trauma
Piqué will be on leave for four months and his stay in the operating theatre is hanging by a thread. Sergi Roberto will not return to Koeman's line-up for another two months. Two injuries that join Ansu Fati's five-month absence. Barça, which happily went to the winter market a year ago to make up for Luis Suárez's absence, can now no longer cope.
With a manager at the wheel, accounts on the verge of suspension of payments, elections on the horizon and a team of 27 players of which four are goalkeepers and De la Fuente belongs to Barça B, lives the Catalan club. To these players we must add the injuries of Piqué, Araujo, Busquets, Sergi Roberto, Ansu Fati and Umtiti. Koeman has 18 players available to face the League, the Champions and the King's Cup and the Super Cup when he comes into play. It is inevitable that players will not continue to fall if the transfers do not arrive. And they will not arrive because there is no money in the box. The League has reduced its salary limit so that they pay off a debt of almost 500 million euros. A short team, but well paid.
Football in times of coronavirus has returned as the business that it is. But not in its genesis as a mass spectacle. To the greater glory of the fan. The public that went to the stadiums was sovereign, now it is not. Because it neither goes nor pays to go. There is football because there is TV. The players are machines of a sport that brings them great benefits in a short period of their lives. They cannot give up their source of income or protest.
The match load on teams was already a problem before the pandemic. In addition to the 38 league matches, there are 13 Champions League matches if the team reaches the final and another seven Copa del Rey matches if the team starts in the 32nd round and ends up playing the final. About 58 matches for a team of 25 players of which ten are of a lower level than the usual starters so they tend to play less in the important moments. And those starters usually have about ten more games with their teams in the middle of a busy season.
And the pandemic arrived to end the upheaval in world football. In the last few months we have seen everything. The league in Ukraine barely stopped and in Argentina it has returned after seven months of confinement. In Europe, football's house of cards has tightened up the calendars even more. What could not be celebrated in confinement must now be developed at full speed for the European Championship and the Olympic Games. Business cannot stop because there is so much at stake.
The final of the Europa League 2020 was on 21 August. The European Super Cup Final was on 24 September. Sevilla returned to work on 7 September, just 15 days after beating Milan. A madness that did not get to the point of being unbearable because the trips around the world to earn money were suspended. The players of the Barça or Real Madrid had more days, but now they live without hardly training between matches of League, recoveries and matches of Champions. "The calendar is too much, I'm worried," said Zidane at a press conference after meeting with all the coaches of Champions. "You have to help the big teams that play every three days and think about the players. With such a tight schedule I don't understand why they don't help us more," Koeman was next to raise his voice.
League, Champions, travel, televisions, breaks, national teams. The cocktail that was already dangerous long time ago with those cracked of Mourinho by the schedules or the famous virus FIFA that returned injured players of the selections has become a molotov cocktail. All the parties involved make and break their interest with the teams and all of them say that the economic benefit is also reflected in those teams that will end up being physically liquidated.
The player does not complain. He complies. Yields. He does what he can. The coach rotates by obligation and ends up presenting impossible line-ups because he knows that there are players at risk of injury if they play more minutes. It is not a question of justifying everything for the money. Or by how well they live. Or by the medical teams they have around them. It's about taking care of the show.
Toni Kross said on his arrival at Real Madrid that the first few months were exhausted by the burden of matches. After 250 he goes further in statements to Bild: "After all, in these additional things that are invented we are only the puppets of FIFA and UEFA. Competitions such as the League of Nations or the planned expansion of the Club World Cup are planned to squeeze everything out of each player financially, of course, but also physically".
The solution is 30 player templates. The coaches already have five changes per game. Football is changing, but the players involved do not adapt to each other's needs. Two teams per team to play more than 60 games per year.
