Kolkata: “I gave everything, physically and mentally. But the very highest level is like a washing machine, you play all the time and never stop.” Raphael Varane telling “Canal Plus” in 2023 why he retired from international football at 29 could resonate with players in a World Cup that has an extra round of knockout matches.
Virgil van Dijk goes into Netherlands’s first match against Japan on Sunday after playing 5841 minutes in one year, the most in Europe’s top five leagues, as per Opta. That’s a lot of football for a man who will want to stay in the World Cup when he turns turn 35 on July 8. Martin Zubimendi, who like van Dijk has featured in all 38 Premier League matches last term, played 4920 minutes before joining Spain in the World Cup.
If Declan Rice starts in England’s midfield against Croatia on June 18 in what will be a repeat of the 2018 semi-final, he will have clocked 5004 minutes over the past year. Rice, 27, played the full match in 30 of Arsenal’s 38 games on way to the Premier League title.
Nealy four years after Doha, Argentina will hope Julian Alvarez, 26, has the legs to do the running for Lionel Messi after 3652 minutes of football for club and country. Between two World Cups, Alvarez also played the Olympics, Copa America and the expanded Club World Cup. After a dramatic qualification, sealed by an 88th minute goal, Viktor Gyokeres will spearhead Sweden’s attack having been on the pitch for a total of 4084 minutes.
Then, there’s travel which can mean long haul flights. In two weeks in May 1985, Diego Maradona played Juventus, Paraguay, Udinese, Chile and Fiorentina juggling duties for Napoli and the national team by shuttling between Italy and Argentina. Even for those without such a crazy schedule, it can be difficult.
“Players involved in midweek matches don’t return home until 3 or 4 am… They play on Wednesday night (often in Europe) and they’re being asked to perform on Saturday at midday, travelling away,” Darren Burgess, a high-performance consultant for FIFPRO and Juventus performance director, was quoted as saying in a Reuters report last month.
There was only 12 days between the end of European club season and the start of the World Cup. It could leave players from the Paris St-Germain-Arsenal match struggling to cope with the heat in a World Cup where most matches will be played in temperatures above 28 degrees Celsius.
Travel in Qatar was 30 minutes to the hotel, Croatia’s Ivan Perisic said before the semi-final against Argentina. In North America, returning to base could mean flying through different time zones.
Qatar was a winter World Cup but the gap between the end of club football and the start of the World Cup was 19 days in 2014 and 2018. It was 22 in 2006, 20 in 2010 and 16 days between Zinedine Zidane’s wonder goal in the Champions League and France’s shock loss to Senegal in 2002. In 1990, the gap between the end of the European season and the World Cup was 34 days.
The last time the World Cup was in Mexico, winners Argentina arrived around a month before their first match against South Korea. Go back to 1970 and Brazil trained for three months including 21 days in Guanajuato, Mexico, to get used to the altitude. The recent Netflix series on the campaign shows how difficult it was initially for some players. But it helped: 12 of the 19 goals they scored came in the second half.
“Even in the heat, I don’t remember having to go the touchline to drink water,” Rivelino said in last month’s “World Soccer”. The water breaks will be a relief and players’ health is better managed now but fatigue could be looming over the World Cup.
