Tired and dissatisfied – Newspaper Kommersant No. 239 (7440) of 12/23/2022

The club European season, which resumes in some of the strongest leagues as early as next week, may once again make you think about the World Cup in Qatar and its specific location on the calendar. Many of the Big Five top teams will have to come to terms with the fact that in pursuit of valuable prizes they will have to take into account the “Qatari factor” – numerous player injuries and fatigue accumulated by leaders whose teams have gone far in the world championship bracket. First of all, this concerns the English Premier League (EPL), which reduced the interval between it and the restart of its championship to a minimum and did not abandon the super-tight schedule at the turn of 2022 and 2023.

Ended on Sunday with the final, in which the Argentine team prevailed in the penalty shootout over the French team, the World Cup in Qatar was mentioned by popular European media resources in recent days in connection with the upcoming events. We are talking about the restart of the most notable national championships. It will take place in the coming days, and the world championship may seem to have a significant impact on these tournaments.

The reason is the specific location of the Qatari championship in the calendar. Due to the climate of the host country, it was shifted from summer to the end of the year, that is, it was held not in the off-season, but in the middle of the season. At the same time, the strongest national championships, which are the basis for recruiting favorite teams, were suspended only a few days before the start of the main four-year tournament. This circumstance deprived the players of the opportunity to recover and at least more or less fully prepare for it. And one of the unpleasant consequences of this approach has already been the enormous number of injuries received immediately before the Qatari competitions or already during them, including serious injuries that disable players for more than a month. The cumulative losses of the championship participants, most likely, were a record for the world championships, and the French team, for example, reached the final match almost without half of the expected basis.

But the experiment that forces football players to play in a super-hard mode actually continues. As a rule, after the World Cup they go on a summer vacation, although the increase in the number of various competitions by the beginning of this decade has decently reduced it. However, after the Qatari World Cup, many of those who performed at it had a purely symbolic vacation. And this means that the clubs of the “big European five” will have to cope with the problems associated with the accumulated fatigue of the players, various kinds of injuries, as well as the need for purely psychological relaxation – for example, after painful misfires, which sometimes they experience for months.

In this sense, the “five”, however, is extremely heterogeneous. Apparently, they will hardly notice the consequences of the Qatari championship in Germany. Her football championship is the only one in which they found a window for a truly solid pause: it will resume only on January 20. Managed to organize a mini-vacation for the players and Italy. In this country, it will last until January 4th. In France, the restart will take place on December 28, but after two rounds played back-to-back, the championship will go on vacation for a week and a half. With their help, the league hopes to stop the “Qatari effect”, which will definitely not affect the first among the heroes of the World Cup: PSG allowed Lionel Messi to enjoy the Argentine triumph until mid-January. A day later than the French, Spanish clubs will return to the field and immediately start playing in the usual format – when tours are held every weekend.

A special place in this list is occupied by the championship, which in the current decade holds the status of the best in most key parameters – such as sports achievements or financial resources. The English Premier League decided to provide the experiment with almost perfect cleanliness. In fact, its clubs and its representatives are already playing at the World Cup. This week was the fourth round of the English League Cup, and Manchester United beat Burnley 2-0 on Wednesday, thanks in large part to the goal of Marcus Rashford, England forward, World Cup quarter-finalist, and late last night Moscow time in the tournament met the other two giants are Manchester City and Liverpool.

The resumption of the championship is scheduled for December 26. In other words, the interval between the 17th round and the final of the world championship, in the final of which, at least as substitutes, a whole group of players from English clubs participated (Argentines Emiliano Martinez, Christian Romero, Lisandro Martinez, Alexis McAllister and Julian Alvarez, Frenchmen Hugo Lloris, Rafael Varane, William Saliba and Ibrahima Konate) is only eight days. But that’s not all. Immediately after the 17th round, without any interval, the 18th will be played on New Year’s holidays. The load seems to be monstrous. And the most important nuance. The landing force from the nuclear submarine in Qatar was much larger than from any other. There were 164 players from the Premier League in the teams’ applications, the closest pursuer, the Spanish top division, had almost half as many, 87.

There is nothing strange that, announcing the restart, all British resources without exception – BBC, The Guardian, Daily Mail – pay close attention to the position of those clubs that are fighting for awards in terms of the workload of their players in Qatar. And they sympathize in advance with, say, the current owner of the Manchester City title. As many as 16 Manchester players played in Qatar, and they spent a total of 5180 minutes on the field: this is the first place in the ranking of “club involvement” in the world championship. Manchester City were lucky that their phenomenal scorer Erling Haaland missed the tournament, as the Norwegian team did not qualify for the World Cup.

Manchester United (14 players, 4029 minutes) and Tottenham Hotspur (11 players, 4107 minutes) found themselves in a similar position. Well, the lucky one is easy to identify. Sensationally leading in the championship with a five-point lead over Manchester City, Arsenal can rely on the relative freshness of the squad in the future struggle. His ten players played only 1699 minutes in Qatar. Moreover, part of this squad – Gabriel Martinelli, Takehiro Tomiyasu, William Saliba, Ben White, Aaron Ramsdale – almost did not leave the benches. And even the fact that the World Cup sent the Brazilian centre-forward of the Londoners Gabriel Jesus to the hospital should not be taken as something catastrophic. In the end, the Qatari championship annoyed the competitors much more.

Alexey Dospekhov