Tribal Football

Injury expert exclusive: Man City, Chelsea can handle CWC - but breaking point looms

Chris Beattie
Injury expert exclusive: Man City, Chelsea can handle CWC - but breaking point looms
Injury expert exclusive: Man City, Chelsea can handle CWC - but breaking point loomsAction Plus
Premier League injury expert Ben Dinnery believes clubs and players will be able to handle their workload over the next 12 months.

After last summer's Euros, many top-line players face the Club World Cup in the USA this year before the 2026 World Cup in a year's time.

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However, despite the schedule, Dinnery says clubs and managers will be able to take care of the workload of their best players involved.

He told Tribalfootball.com: "Those Premier League squads in particular can be fairly well stacked in strength and depth.

"I know Manchester City and Chelsea have had injury problems. But they can rotate and manage minutes very heavily. Without any disrespect to some of the teams who are attending that tournament, the likes of those Premier League sides who are going across Stateside, they could be fairly comfortable and confident that,  you could go out with almost a second string XI and get a very favourable result.

"So in that regard, you're going to have the disruption of maybe the travel and the different environments and training facilities but the assumption and the expectation is they're going to be of a very high level anyway and players could be managed. 

"If we look at the winter World Cup in Qatar  the talk prior to that tournament was we're going to come back and we're going

to see these huge spikes of injury across the board when the reality is what we actually saw was a downturn in the number of injuries.

"Even if you went deep into the tournament, you're maybe only playing seven or eight games across a four-week period. So actually the players were maybe a little bit refreshed and ready to kick on for that second half of the season."

 

 

Fans and players at breaking point

However, Dinnery also says a breaking point is coming given the way the football calendar is now becoming increasingly jam-packed.

Indeed, he can see both players and fans eventually voicing their complaints over the standard being produced due to the heavy workload.

He explained: "A Club World Cup this year, World Cup next year and I agree the players haven't been given or not allowed the time away from football to be able to sort it because you know physically we know the demands of the game, but psychologically as well you also need to the opportunity to to switch off.

"But you're also doing a disservice to the fans and supporters who are paying,  a lot of hard-earned money to watch games and expect players to deliver. And physically, they're just not able to do that because it's that accumulation of fatigue." 

 

- Ben Dinnery was speaking to Tribalfootball.com on behalf of Card Player