- FIFPRO Warns of Player Burnout as Arsenal Stars Face Marathon Campaign
Premier League champions Arsenal may have ended the season with silverware and one of the club’s finest modern campaigns, but their success has also placed football’s growing workload crisis back under the spotlight.
Global players’ union FIFPRO has issued a fresh warning over the increasing physical demands being placed on elite footballers, using Arsenal’s marathon campaign as a clear example of how the modern football calendar is stretching players close to breaking point in a crucial World Cup year.
Arsenal’s run across domestic and European competitions has left several key players facing extraordinary workloads. Goalkeeper David Raya, midfielders Martin Zubimendi and Declan Rice, forwards Viktor Gyokeres and Eberechi Eze are all projected to appear in between 78 and 83 matchday squads for club and country before the end of the year.
The numbers point to a wider structural problem in elite football. The sport’s most valuable players are being asked to deliver consistently across domestic leagues, domestic cups, European competitions, international windows and now an expanded FIFA World Cup calendar.
Among Arsenal’s squad, Zubimendi has carried one of the heaviest burdens. The Spanish midfielder featured in all 38 Premier League matches as Arsenal marched to the title, while also recording 67 appearances across all competitions for club and country — the highest tally among Arsenal players this season.
Rice has already played 65 matches, while Gyokeres has reached 63 appearances, with both expected to add more games as the UEFA Champions League final and the 2026 FIFA World Cup approach.
Arsenal’s deep runs to the League Cup final and FA Cup quarter-finals only intensified the demands on the squad, compressing recovery time and leaving little room for physical reset.
According to Darren Burgess, high-performance consultant for FIFPRO and performance director at Juventus, the evidence linking excessive workload to injuries is now too strong to ignore.
“There is evidence to suggest that workload is a real issue. We have years of data to support it,” Burgess said. “We know injuries are now workload-related. Workload is increasing year after year even though we have evidence it’s detrimental.”
His warning reflects a growing concern within football medicine and performance science: the problem is no longer just minutes played. It is the accumulation of matches, travel, sleep disruption, tactical intensity, recovery compression and emotional fatigue.
Players involved in European midweek fixtures often compete on Wednesday night, return home in the early hours of Thursday morning and are then expected to perform again in domestic matches over the weekend.
“The data shows their physical output during games is compromised when they play back-to-back matches,” Burgess added. “It’s not guesswork, it’s objective proof. The impact is enormous.”
The concern is especially acute because the 2026 FIFA World Cup will begin just 11 days after the Champions League final between Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain. That leaves little time for rest, recovery, travel adaptation or proper tournament preparation.
Former Real Madrid fitness coach Gregory Dupont warned that players moving directly from club finals into international duty may struggle to reach peak condition.
“Players who play the Champions League final won’t have time for full preparation, to acclimatise to the heat, to play at your full level of fitness,” Dupont said.
The environmental challenge awaiting players in North America could worsen the pressure. With matches spread across the United States, Mexico and Canada, teams will face long travel distances, multiple time zones and, in some venues, high temperatures.
Dupont said more than half of the World Cup matches are expected to be played in temperatures above 28 degrees Celsius, increasing concerns about fatigue, hydration, recovery and injury risk.
Maheta Molango, chief executive of the English Professional Footballers’ Association, warned that the tournament could become less about football quality and more about physical survival.
“We fear the World Cup will turn into the survival of the fittest,” Molango said. “No player is asking for sympathy. They understand they are privileged people. But they are not robots.”
That phrase captures the tension at the centre of modern football. Players are better paid, better conditioned and better monitored than ever before. But they are also being asked to perform more often, across more competitions, in more demanding tactical systems and under greater commercial pressure.
Molango pointed to Arsenal captain Martin Ødegaard as a striking example. The Norwegian midfielder, normally among Arsenal’s most reliable performers, missed several matches this season through injury ahead of Norway’s long-awaited return to the World Cup for the first time in 28 years.
Ødegaard averaged 46 matches per season across the previous three campaigns, but managed only 35 appearances this year as recurring fitness problems interrupted his rhythm.
“He’s an unbelievable professional who looks after himself,” Molango said. “But look at how many games he missed this year compared to previous seasons. Is it fair that instead of focusing on football he has to focus on his own body? That shouldn’t be the case.”
For Arsenal, the issue is particularly delicate. Their success has been built on intensity, control, pressing, positional discipline and the consistent availability of key players. But the deeper a club goes in major competitions, the greater the physical tax on the squad.
That is the paradox of elite football: success creates more matches, and more matches increase the risk of physical decline.
The broader concern for the sport is that governing bodies, leagues and commercial organisers continue to expand competition formats while medical and performance experts warn that players have finite physical capacity.
The expanded World Cup, enlarged club competitions and congested domestic calendars may all create more revenue and global spectacle. But they also increase the risk that football’s biggest tournaments are decided not only by talent and tactics, but by which players are still physically intact.
FIFPRO’s warning is therefore not simply about Arsenal. It is about the direction of the game.
Football’s calendar has become a commercial machine, but the human body remains the limiting factor. As the 2026 World Cup approaches, the question for the sport’s authorities is becoming harder to avoid: how much more can elite players reasonably carry before performance, welfare and the quality of the game begin to suffer?
