Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou and captain Son Heung-min have both insisted the growing football schedule must be addressed.
Spurs begin their Europa League campaign on Thursday at home to Qarabag and the initial phase of the competition has been extended to eight games instead of six, which is also the same for the Champions League.
Manchester City midfielder Rodri suggested last week that players could strike over the increasing fixture congestion before days later he suffered a serious knee injury.
“They may take things into their own hands. They’re the ones most affected to be honest, so you would understand if they started to think as a collective, how much are we going to have to continually not have a say in?” Postecoglou explained.
“I have spoken already about the fact we’re getting to a real dangerous level about what our expectations are around players. Instead of focusing on one or two tournaments, it’s about the calendar. That is more of an issue.
“Players don’t get a break between seasons any more like they used to. There are more tournaments both at club level, international level and continental level.
“So, it’s going to get to a point where we are not going to have the best players out there playing and even worse them breaking down for various reasons. It’s definitely something that needs to be addressed.”
The issue is of particular significance for Son, who regularly travels across the world to feature in South Korea matches before a quick turnaround back to domestic matters.
Son insisted the players are not robots and highlighted City being forced to play Watford on Tuesday two days after an action-packed 2-2 draw with Arsenal where Rodri was injured.
“You don’t want to see players struggling with injuries. No one wants to see it. A lot of games, a lot of travelling. We’ve got to look after ourselves, which sometimes is very hard,” Son reflected.
“Mentally, physically, you’re not ready. Then going on to the pitch and then the risk of injury is massive. We’re not robots. Don’t get me wrong, we love playing football. That’s clear.
“It’s about adding more games. City played Sunday and Tuesday and it wasn’t even flexible. It could be moved probably to play Wednesday instead of Tuesday. It’s not flexible. That’s what we’re talking about.
“It’s normal that everyone is at high risk of injury. It’s not fair. Rodri said the right things. We play 50, 60 games and not more than 70 games. When the fixtures come, the players have to play. There’s a lot going on.
“You have the FA and FIFA. Everyone has to take this really seriously. It’s not just random and a few players coming out.
“There’s way too many games and what you want to see is the quality of the games. High quality games with top players. This should be the aim.
“Injuries sometimes come with less games but the possibility of lots of travelling, lots of games, injuries will be higher.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here