Calcio | Football | The Beautiful Game | Profit | Commercialism | Stability | Fixture Congestion

THE BEAUTIFUL GAME OF FOOTBALL

How much football is too much football? This is the burgeoning scenario the footballing world is facing, or not facing from the players perspective. The biggest sport in the world continues to grow with the business of football fuelling the exceptional growth. A reduction of fixtures or competitions will hurt clubs, leagues and eventually the pockets of all participants from players, staff and fundamentally the fandoms by enforced exclusivity. The situation will need to be addressed sooner or later, especially with vocal players at the elite level increasingly speaking out at every turn.

The powers that govern the sport and the players associations need to come together to find common ground. My solution is to increase the squad sizes across all competitions from the basic 25-man gameday squad to 30+ and increasing substitutions limit from five to seven per game. This will help limit exposure to fixture congestion and ultimately player well-being. The financial implications for increasing squad size can be mitigated to include b-team and youth players already on the books. Which in turn could help institutions to better develop and persist with youth systems and the like.

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