Recently, the Royal Institute of Sport in the UK published a research report confirming that although the number of games played by European mainstream league clubs has been increasing since the beginning of the century, the average playing time per season for players has been decreasing, and their workload has been gradually declining.
Taking the top five European leagues as a sample, during the 23/24 season, Premier League clubs had the highest number of instances (87) of playing two domestic games within 72 hours, and the average interval between back-to-back matches was also the shortest (67.3 hours). Manchester United, Manchester City, and Real Madrid were the clubs with the most friendly matches played outside of Europe between July 2010 and May 2024, with 52, 45, and 45 matches respectively. In terms of friendlies, the Premier League also set a new historical record in 23/24, with clubs collectively playing 42 friendly matches outside of mainland Europe during the off-season, totaling 308,212 kilometers in flights.
According to the report’s statistics, Chelsea center-back David Luiz played a total of 6,258 minutes for club and country in the 12/13 season (equivalent to almost 70 full matches), holding the record for the highest single-season minutes played in the past 25 years among all players who have participated in the eight major European leagues. He was followed by Lampard and Roberto Carlos, and Manchester United attacking core Bruno Fernandes (6th). If we expand the analysis to the top 50 players in terms of minutes played, the average playing time of players in the past three seasons has shown a downward trend compared to any three-year period since the 99/00 season. This leads to the conclusion that in recent years, despite the intense schedule and increasing number of matches, players have not shown significant signs of increased playing time.
Furthermore, analyzing data from the four major European leagues (England, Germany, Italy, and Spain), since FIFA permanently introduced the five-substitution rule, substitute players have averaged an increase of 86,775 minutes per season, a 51.1% increase compared to the period when only three substitutions were allowed. This significantly alleviates the physical burden on regular starting players.
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