Gareth Southgate faces taking a burnt-out England to this winter’s World Cup in Qatar.
That is the verdict of world-renowned fitness coach Raymond Verheijen, who has been to four of the last five international tournaments with Holland, South Korea and Russia.
The Dutchman thinks England boss Southgate has an impossible balancing act, with players having racked up more than 30 games each since the start of this domestic and European season.
It means Southgate and their medical team will already be up against it by the time they kick off against Iran at 1pm on November 21. Former Wales assistant Verheijen said: “You don’t have to be Einstein to understand that one week’s preparation for a World Cup is too short.
“The consequence is that games in the group phase will basically be the friendly games teams normally play in preparation – and then the tournament really starts in the knockout stage.
“The last thing that coaching staff should do is try to squeeze in that one week what they would normally do in two to three weeks because that would mean they would overload their players, which will result in an accumulation of fatigue and injuries.”
Europe’s top five leagues tried to compensate for the enforced five-week break generated by this World Cup with a heavily concentrated pre-tournament fixture list.
Players at an elite level face up to nine hours’ worth of added game time before they arrive in Qatar.
On average, those called up to Southgate’s Three Lions squad will have to undergo six additional hours on the pitch alongside weekly training.
Verheijen added: “If you force players to play games while they are not fully recovered from the previous game, you are gradually exhausting the body of those players.
“Besides the injury risk going up, gradually and systematically exhausting the body of players means you are shortening the careers of those players. The things we are discussing are not subjective opinions, but objective facts.
“The problem is that, in the football world, it is normal behaviour to disagree with objective facts.
PFA chief executive Maheta Molongo has already warned that some players risk their careers being curtailed by the unrelenting demands of the current year-round football calendar.
And Verheijen – who previously worked with clubs including Chelsea, Manchester City and Barcelona – admits that this endless churn of games will also carry a debilitating impact. He said: “What you see is that the Champions League teams, they play midweek games almost every week right up until the World Cup.
“If you play Sunday-Wednesday-Sunday, it’s impossible to fully recover between those games.
“That’s scientifically proven, so, in terms of recovery, there is unfinished business.
“When you accumulate fatigue over time, your nervous system becomes slower.
“That means the signals from your brain to your muscles travel slower.
“So, a slower nervous system has a negative result on performance and means that your injury risk will go up because your coordination will go down.”
