Professional footballers, including millionaires, show symptoms of burnout or burnout syndrome. burn out. This is clear from the report published this Thursday by the world players’ union, FIFPRO, within the framework of its congress held in London. The document, prepared by doctors and experts, contains a sweeping survey. The participants, 1,283 footballers from the most developed leagues in the world and their coaches, claim to feel exploited to the point of suffering from sleep problems, stress, lack of physical recovery and such exhaustive submission to the calendar that it prevents them from having a full personal life.
The employers lined up alongside the employees. The League and the Premier, represented by their presidents, Javier Tebas and Richard Masters, went to London to support the footballers’ claim. The requirement is common: a calendar that allows them to guarantee a minimum rest. Both groups, that of the leagues of the World Association of Leagues and that of FIFPRO, pointed to FIFA as the person most responsible for a saturation that the new Club World Cup scheduled between June 15 and July 13, 2025, will lead to. to new limits.
50% of the players declared having suffered one or more injuries due to playing an “excess” of games. 54% of those surveyed claimed to have been aligned without being completely recovered from injuries; and 82% of coaches admitted to fielding players who were not physically fit to play, claiming they did so due to pressure to achieve results.
72% of the players and 78% of the coaches were in favor of guaranteeing a minimum rest period, something that no FIFA calendar has guaranteed until now. The sequences of successive matches played two or three days apart, on weekends and during the week, are a cause of serious physical and mental stress, according to FIFPRO doctors, and a cause for special concern. 85% of players believe that a maximum limit of six should be placed on the series of consecutive games played in this way.
The report denounces with special emphasis the overexploitation of young players. To make the regression in recent decades graphic, FIFPRO compares different generations of footballers from England, Germany and Brazil, and warns about the danger this poses to the “longevity” of the careers of those affected. According to the data, before turning 21, David Beckham played 9,929 minutes as a professional spread over several seasons; Two and a half decades later Jude Bellingham played 18,486 minutes before turning 21. The average has doubled in 25 years. In Germany too. If Michael Ballack played 4,175 minutes before the 21st, Florian Wirtz, the fashionable star in the Bundesliga, played 11,495. The case of Vinicius is even more extreme. The Brazilian from Madrid participated in 344 games when he turned 24, while Ronaldinho Gaúcho had 162 when he turned that age.
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