Opinion: Are there too many soccer matches going on?
The current state of soccer is all over the place, are teams playing too many games.
FIFA has recently announced a new tournament and rebranded an old tournament. The 2025 Club World Cup draw was a week ago and we have the group stage set, meanwhile the old format still exists but has been rebranded as the Intercontinental Cup. The 2026 World Cup is also not far away and has been expanded to 48 teams which will see another expansion of the tournament since 1998 FIFA World Cup in France when they expanded to 32 teams. FIFA keeps adding more and more games for players and clubs but is this good thing for the game?
The expansion of the World Cup
The World Cup is the pinnacle of soccer and every player dream of making it to the big stage. Qualification matches happen during international breaks throughout the regular season and usually is about a two week period where international players play 2-3 matches during this time. There is not an increase of qualification matches but the upcoming World Cup cycle will cause an additional 16 teams/countries participate at the World Cup during the summer. We already see players come back to their clubs exhausted after these international tournaments but we will see more after this new cycle. This is a problem for clubs more than anything as many of the players dream to play at the World Cup, it is not an opportunity that one would want to miss.
Is the expansion a good thing? It can be viewed in two different ways from fans and players alike a chance of a World Cup is available to 16 more countries, an extra possibility to compete on the biggest world stage, have your country make it. Every World Cup cycle we have had those teams that are first time participants or returning after not qualifying for decades. We now have 16 extra spots for those countries that have been close but could not make it. Now the other side is the club side, they are allowing players on huge contracts to go to these matches where if they sustain an injury it can affect their team in league or cup competitions. Which brings into question why did FIFA add even more matches in the summer for clubs and why make the Club World Cup a massive tournament.
The Intercontinental Cup and Club World Cup
Before we bring up the New Club World Cup, let us talk about the Old Club World Cup which has now been renamed the Intercontinental Cup. The Intercontinental Cup has taken place every year and was a short knockout tournament that consisted of that year’s 6 continental champions and the host country’s domestic champion to crown a Club World Champion. However FIFA announced during the Club World Cup draw that the tournament will continue just under a new name as they will now have an official Club World Cup that will take place every 4 years.
As stated FIFA has announced a Club World Cup that will be taking place every 4 years and will have 32 teams participating. Qualification for this tournament will be straightforward for 21 teams. 21 teams will qualify to the Club World Cup by winning their continental trophy, the last four continental champions of 5 confederations will qualify with only the Oceania Football Confederation getting one spot. The remaining spots go to UEFA who has an additional 8 spots and CONMEBOL who has 2 more spots with the last spot being reserved for the host country.
This tournament will be taking place during the summer just like the World Cup, however this is time usually players are either resting after a long season or participating with their country. The Club World Cup will be taking place every 4 years but it will also be taking place a year before the World Cup meaning a lot of players who are at these clubs are also getting called up to their national teams to try to qualify to the World Cup. We have already started to see that many players have started saying they play too many games so adding more games to your club just makes it a bigger problem.
What is the benefit of this tournament? Well honestly I do not see anything amazing about it besides it could be great fun for fans who can see matchups that would never happen without this tournament. The players will be the ones that suffer from this with the extra games from this tournament. Many of the leagues go on break during the summer as they give time for the players to rest.
Domestic League and Domestic Cups.
The domestic leagues have not changed the amount of games throughout the season the same is still being played, however the matches that do affect amount of games played are the domestic cup matches. Every country has domestic cup matches that have very tier of soccer compete for a trophy, it is a good way to get cinderella stories in soccer. However this does add more matches to certain teams calendars.
Domestic Cups are important because they let smaller teams prove themselves against teams that are at top of the pyramid. I do think there are certain trophies that do not have to exist as they just add to a very packed schedule. For example while the Carabao EFL Cup has the history behind it to be kept around only having the top 4 leagues in England participate feels unnecessary at this point. While yes it qualifies you to the newly made UEFA Conference League play-off round it does not add much value to tournaments.
Continental Trophies that are pointless.
As I mentioned before UEFA made the Conference League for teams that could not qualify to Champions League or Europa League. It was UEFA’s solution to help balance the continental match up. However there is a minor imbalance in that a lot of the teams place 6-8 in the top 5 Leagues can play in the Conference League it just adds matches to teams that have always been close Europe but just never made it. As time has gone on we have noticed teams with lower budgets can not afford to compete in these competitions.
Union Berlin was a prime example of having too many games and not enough money and players to keep up with the workload that came with play in Europe. They had finished 4th in the Bundesliga in the 2022-23 campaign and qualified to the Champions League for the 23-24 season. However we saw Union Berlin have a very horrid start to the season as well as a very underwhelming Champions League group stage.
However I while I think UEFA adding another trophy is contributing to the extra amount of games that are being played in soccer. I think the way they have done it have been a bit more balanced and helped their region as a whole because they are helping league in Europe find their footing in European competitions unlike the CONCACAF.
CONCACAF to be exact the USSF and FMF have created one of the most useless, money grabbing competition’s in recent history, that has just changed the way the schedule works again. Leagues Cup is an “international” trophy that only MLS and Liga MX team compete in and games only take place in the USA or Canada no games are played in Mexico a very strange way to claim an international tournament. UEFA received a lot of backlash when certain teams in Europe considered making a Super League but CONCACAF has allowed this to happen in their region.
A lot can be said about this tournament as it not only favors MLS teams but also the thing is in the Champions Cup, MLS teams have struggled to win the trophy. Seattle Sounders won the Champions Cup for the first time in 2022 but that was the first time in 22 years an MLS team had won the Champions Cup. The last time a MLS team won the Champions Cup was 2000 when the LA Galaxy won it. The MLS and Liga MX did try to reduce the work load of games by getting rid of their domestic trophies while Liga MX completely got rid of it, the MLS received backlash for pulling teams out of it. A useless trophy that replaced historic trophies is not the route we should be going.
So are they playing too many games?
I personally think they are playing too many games but I think this a good thing. The thing is the teams that are playing multiple games are the big clubs who are good enough to qualify to these games. It helps create a balance between the big and small clubs as big clubs have a lot of money to spend on players and facilities and other things needed at a club. I do think the health of the players are being put at risk but we have reached the point where there is so much money in the sport that we should really question if these athletes should be getting paid the amounts they are. The transfer market was broken with Neymar’s 220 Million Euro transfer to PSG and since then we have been seeing ridiculous transfer fees for players that would not be considered the same caliber as Neymar in his prime. There is so much money in the sport that the amount of game being played should not be questioned.