I completely understand that we need international football. I love a good summer national tournament, it’s incredible. Some of the memories formed watching these competitions will forever live in my heart as some of the fondest ever.
I love England and watching my country play, and I am sure many of you feel the same about your countries too. International football can be great.
Admittedly, I lost a lot of my connection to England watching us under Gareth Southgate, but I am looking forward and excited to get that passion and connection back again under Thomas Tuchel.
Even still, the amount of international games played during a domestic season needs to be revised, because it’s just getting silly.
Chelsea withdrew Levi Colwill and Cole Palmer from the England squad after Wesley Fofana was withdrawn from the France squad earlier in the day. None of them are technically injured as such, they are just carrying normal niggles from recent games and ideally just need to allow those niggles a bit of time to recover. Chelsea are being cautious, and they aren’t the only ones.
England announced that a massive EIGHT players withdrew from the national squad yesterday. That must be some kind of record?
But it comes as no surprise. Clubs don’t want their players going off playing pointless games in the pointless Nations League to risk injuries during a crucial part of the season when they have European games to play and also the mad festive period coming up.
We have had THREE international breaks already this season and we have only played ELEVEN games. That’s just absurd and unnecessary.
I get it, they bought the Nations League in to make the international breaks more interesting as apposed to it just being pointless friendlies. That’s fine, but the amount of games now being played during a domestic season just makes it a hugely bad idea to start. If there was less international games, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. But they still come during crucial periods and I am afraid that club football will always come first. Club football is the money maker.
The more this goes on and the more international breaks they throw into a season, the more we will see almost an entire starting Xl pulling from squads.
We need international football and we do need games during a season, but they need to revise this so there are just not as many games played. It’s just got silly.
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