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By Tony Attwood
Arsenal have 16 players involved in the World Cup finals. Of coure not all of them will play every game for their country, quite possibly some of them will not play a competitive game at all, some will come back fit and well, have a quick holiday and then rejoin Arsenal, and sadly, if past records aqre anything to go by, some will come back from the World Cup seriously injured, with a note saying “have him ready for the next game”.
Here is the list of the 16 players now seriously at risk of a) being injured and worse b) being played while injured because the international manager has no long-term concerns about the player’s well-being (something made even worse by the fact that some managers will know their international contract ends at the end of this world cup).
- Belgium: Leandro Trossard
- Brazil: Gabriel, Gabriel Martinelli
- Ecuador: Piero Hincapié
- England: Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka, Noni Madueke, Eberechi Eze
- Franc: William Saliba
- Germany: Kai Havertz
- Netherlands: Jurriën Timber
- Norway: Martin Ødegaard
- Spain: David Raya, Mikel Merino, Martín Zubimendi
- Sweden: Viktor Gyökeres
The World Cup final is on 19 July, and the first pre-season game to be announced thus far is a match in Ireland – the first there for some eight years. It will be at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin, against Real Betis on 5 August. That is 17 days after the World Cup final.
Of course, not every player will make it to the World Cup final on 19 July, which is fortunate since the Premier League starts on 15 August, just ten days after the World Cup final. Now we know that Premier League players are guaranteed to have 21 days without playing or training (in other words, three weeks off) in the summer, and that is a length of time agreed by the players’ union and Fifa. And of course, they then need some time training before playing. An absolute minimum is normally considered to be two weeks. Three weeks is far better.
In fact, sports psychologists and biologists reckon that such a period of getting fit is not enough and stress the need for an absolute minimum of one month off from all training and playing and then another four weeks for pre-season training and a build-up to competitive games.
The difference between the guaranteed three-week break and the recommneded eight weeks complete break is is of course, enormous, and it is due to this that clubs that depend on international players for their team success in the league can run into trouble as autumn turns to winter.
Of course, the players who get the advantage are those whose country has not qualified for the World Cup finals or which gets knocked out in the group stages which end on June 27. They can return to training on 21 July and be ready to play on 15 August for the first game of the season.
Otherwise, the players who happened to be born in or have elected to play for countries still in the World Cup have to wait, and even then may not be ready physically for their first game.
Here is the list of world cup dates…. and remember there should be three weeks holiday and then three weeks training before the player plays again.
- Group stage: June 11-27
- Round of 32: June 28 to July 3
- Round of 16: July 4-7
- Quarter-finals: July 9-11
- Semi-finals: July 14-15
- Third-place play-off (‘Bronze final’): July 18
- Final: July 19
- Arsenal first friendly: August 5.
Meanwhile, having become alarmed by the fact that fans have finally worked out that 99% of the stuff that football journalists say in the summer break is untrue (as opposed to 98% during the actual season), these journalists have now invented a new world for us to live in: the banersphere, and that is what they publish. Fans of course, don’t have anything to do with it and certainly don’t repeat what the journalists call banter, which just further widens the gap between the reality we know and the world invented by those writing about and describing football in the media.
