When France opens their World Cup campaign on 17 June against Senegal at the Metlife Stadium in New Jersey, they will do so as one of the firm favourites to lift the greatest prize in the game. Winners in 2018 and finalists in 2022, France will arrive on US soil brimming, as usual, with some of the finest players on the global stage right now. But in what state will these footballers find themselves at the game’s greatest show? Energised, fresh, and raring to go? Most unlikely.
France is already battling with injuries and injury scares. Their lanky new forward, Hugo Ekitike, who was one of the few bright sparks in a difficult season for Liverpool, and who was all set to partner the phenomenal Kylian Mbappé, has been ruled out with a tear in his Achilles tendon. Mbappé, who is, without exaggeration, the biggest and brightest attraction at the Cup, is down with an injury too. A torn hamstring has ruled him out of the last few matches of the season for Real Madrid, and the man who is one of only two players in the history of the World Cup to score in two consecutive finals (2018 and 2022, where he struck a hat trick in a losing cause) is in a race against time to be fit again for the Cup.
The footballing prodigy Lamine Yamal, who at just 18 is the wonderful creative force that drives the vaunted Spanish national side, is in the same boat as Mbappé. Out for the rest of the season for Barcelona with a hamstring injury and in a desperate scramble to be fit for the Cup. Will we see a World Cup without the two current custodians of beauty of the “beautiful game”?
Other stars who may or may not make it include Mo Salah, and 19-year-old Brazil and Chelsea forward Estêvão. Those who are definitely missing out include Brazil and Real Madrid forward Rodrygo as well as Brazil’s defensive mainstay Éder Militão, the sparkling Dutch midfielder Xavi Simons, who is just 23, and German forward Serge Gnabry.
While injuries are just another part of the game, the way players are being pushed towards breaking point is not. World football is in a crisis of ruthless scheduling that has, over the last couple of seasons, added more and more matches to the calendar so that top players at top clubs are now playing pretty much round the clock, through the year.
Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) for example, played 65 matches in their historic treble-winning 2024-25 season, the highest number of matches ever for a French football team. They played the final of the Club World Cup in July, and were back together as a team prepping for their first game of the new season in August with just a week’s break in between.
Star PSG players like France’s Ousmane Dembélé and Bradley Barcola, or Morocco’s Achraf Hakimi have played non-stop for the club and for country in the World Cup qualifiers, African Nations Cup and European Nations League, and will arrive at the World Cup having played football without a meaningful break for two years.
Years of research and studies put the maximum number of matches for a footballer in a year at between 50 and 55, a number that’s endorsed by the player’s union FifPro, before physical and mental exhaustion put them at serious risk of injuries. Yet players have, especially since the introduction of Fifa’s Club World Cup last year, a quadrennial competition very much structured like the World Cup, regularly crossed that limit. Real Madrid and Uruguay’s Federico Valverde made 72 appearances for club and country in 2024-25, clocking in a record 6,116 minutes of pushing his body to the limits on the pitch. Portugal and Manchester United’s Bruno Fernandes played 66 games and Hakimi played 62, among the top ten footballers with the most workload in that season.
Overworked and overwhelmed players have been complaining now for years about their scheduling, but the powers that be, chasing more and more lucrative deals, have shown scant sympathy.
Last season, the UEFA Champions League was restructured in a way that added between two to four matches to the teams that reach the final. Then Fifa added the month-long Club World Cup, in what used to be the traditional off-period at the end of the season, adding another seven matches for the likes of PSG, who reached the final of the tournament, at the end of an already gruelling year of non-stop action.
Almost every top club in Europe played up to 10 extra matches last season as compared to previous seasons; most top clubs played 70-plus fixtures, and most top footballing nations played up to five more matches than they usually do in a calendar year—the 2024-25 season lasted for an incredible 356 days for many clubs. Compare that to 2023-24, where the average number of games played by top European clubs was 48, with Manchester City playing the highest number of matches at 59.
“Between 40 and 50 is the amount of games in which a player can perform at the highest level,” Manchester City and Spain midfielder Rodri said last year. “After that you drop because it is impossible to sustain the physical level. This year we can go to 70, maybe 80, I don’t know. It is too much. And if it keeps this way, there will be a moment where we have no other option (but to go on strike). It’s something that worries us because we are the guys that suffer.”
Last June, the English and French players unions filed a case against Fifa at the European Commission after football’s world body announced the expanded international and Club World Cup calendar, followed by similar appeals filed by Fifpro and the top European Leagues.
Fifa, not one to be cowed down, began a counter campaign against the leagues, saying that they were “acting with commercial self-interest, hypocrisy, and without consideration to everyone else in the world.”
There is, of course, truth on both side—Fifa never misses an opportunity to make more money by scheduling more international matches and tournaments—it wants the World Cup to be held every two years instead of four—but neither do the leagues, who, ideally, want the players all to themselves. In this battle for more money, the players are like pawns.
One thing is for sure, no matter what the commercial considerations, the amount of top-tier football being played right now is not sustainable. When the pawns collapse, so will the game.
For now, to add to the disheartening lead-up to the 2026 World Cup—extreme ticket prices, the spectre of rising heat, the shadow of war, and a host country that wants to bar entry to the fans and supporters of many participating nations—there are the weary and burdened players, hoping to stay fit and inspired for what’s supposed to be football’s greatest tournament.
Rudraneil Sengupta is the author of The Beast Within, a detective novel set in Delhi.