Manchester City's 2022/23 season began 11 months ago in Houston, and some of those players have been playing non-stop ever since.
With the much-maligned June international break this week, City players have had the high of completing the treble, celebrating in Turkey, Ibiza and Manchester, and are now back in training with their national teams. When they wrap up next week, they will only get a couple of weeks to themselves before City recall them for pre-season training.
Last summer, players only had two or three weeks to themselves either side of the June internationals before pre-season, and they have since played 64 games plus a World Cup campaign. That is a game to prepare for every five days on average, and the outlook doesn't look much easier going into next season.
City's first pre-season fixture this season is in Tokyo when they face Yokohama F Marinos on July 23, less than six weeks since the Champions League final, and around a month since the end of the international break. With Euro 2024 following the club's campaign next summer, players could be in action for 51 weeks without a break.
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Pep Guardiola has regularly called upon FIFA and UEFA to reduce the amount of games that his players have to play, and he will look at the 2023/24 schedule as evidence that there are simply too many fixtures to fit in. As City have qualified for the UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup, they will compete for seven trophies next season, playing a maximum of 67 games next season if they reach all the finals.
However, they only have 68 opportunities to play them assuming that one game can be played each midweek. There will simply be no opportunity to rest, aside from a single week in January set aside for a few days off, unless City get knocked out of one or more of the competitions they have their sights on winning.
“Our players have international games now," Guardiola said immediately after the Champions League final. "UEFA and FIFA, think about it. The Premier League finished two or three weeks ago, now people have to come back. It's too much.”
Including pre-season, City could play 70 games in 45 weeks, at an average of a game every 4.5 days. After a two-week break at the end of the season, players will then begin their Euro 2024 campaigns, so that 'break' will instead be a training camp, perhaps with a friendly or two to prepare.
If a City player plays all seven games at the Euros, they could play on average every five days for the 51 weeks between the first game of pre-season this summer and the Euro 2024 final.
Even after that, the gap to pre-season for 2024/25 will be minimal, followed by another long season, and then City will be involved in the 2025 Club World Cup involving 48 teams across June and July. The upcoming two or three weeks of holiday could be their only real down-time in the next two years.
Take Julian Alvarez, for example, who has played since the start of 2022, through the summer with no real break, up to the final of the World Cup, and then to the end of City's long season. On Wednesday, he was playing again for Argentina. He could face a total of around two or three weeks off between January 2022 and July 2024 as he will be involved in the Copa America that summer.
Kevin De Bruyne has echoed his manager, saying that the schedule is too much on players. Physically, he says, players should be ready to play those games given the support they get. Mentally, he stressed the importance of having some downtime.
Guardiola had a small squad to win the treble last season, with only 20 senior players, including three goalkeepers. That fact won't prevent the usual suspects from declaring confidently that City only won their three titles because they have a huge squad to work with, but the reality is that they didn't.
Some key players could leave this summer, and while City will look to replace them and strengthen, they may also try to add bodies ahead of a gruelling season ahead. Guardiola has always known that the fixtures will keep on coming - although he may not have expected to what extent.
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