As a fan WHY would you want a winter break?
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I am getting annoyed with constant calls for a winter break and threads such as the one claiming it is a disgrace that the players have to play two matches in 48 hours over xmas.
As a football fan why would you want less football??
I have grown up with the tradition of having bonus football over the xmas period and its actually one of the main things i and many other football fans look forward to for the xmas period.
So why the constant calls for a winter break? The players themselves are paid more then enough to cope with "inconvenience"...
As a football fan why would you want less football??
I have grown up with the tradition of having bonus football over the xmas period and its actually one of the main things i and many other football fans look forward to for the xmas period.
So why the constant calls for a winter break? The players themselves are paid more then enough to cope with "inconvenience"...
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The calls for a winter break vary from matching our calendar with the other European leagues, subverting potential cancellations over Christmas, and allowing for players in better condition at the end of the season/international tournament.
I look forward to players being so selfless as to call their wage irrelevant to what they do. Imagine the season ticket prices coming down over the next few seasons...
As for the OP a 'winter break' in itself doesn't have to start at this time of year, so it could maintain football over the holidays.
Also the amount of football would likely remain the same without league restructuring, you'd simply move some games to earlier/later in the season.
1) Why does it matter if our calender is the same as other european leagues?
2) Games could get cancelled at any time of the year, wasnt there games called off in november/early december this season?
3) There isnt always an international tournament at the end of a season and normally by the end of a normal season you only have a third of the league with anything worth playing for.
It's not irrelevant to what they do, it's irrelevant to think that the richer they are, the less susceptible to injury they are. The idea that 'they earn enough, they should be able to play whenever' is nonsensical.
1. To prevent the regular excuse of our players being tired at the tail-end of the season compared to other countries and teams.
2. They could, but they're far more likely to be cancelled at a particular time as we've seen this year and last.
3. So you're saying two-thirds of players could benefit? Not really an argument against. There isn't always a tournament, but club honours are decided at the end of every season.
For the record I don't want a break (teams would just swan off for lucrative friendlies in the US and Asia anyway), I'm just explaining the reasons people put forward.
Otherwise it's just moving about 4 fixtures that you would have over Christmas to other times of the year and make congestion even worse
Winter break talk is nonsense, as Celesti said teams would be swanning off to the four corners of the world to play crappy friendlies anyway, I remember Man United flying out to Saudi a couple of years back to play some crappy friendly, around Jan time I think, what a farce.
Serie A has 20 teams and a winter break, among others.
It is relevent - if someone can play 2 or 3 matches a week and do a 40 hour full-time job, then surely its reasonable to expect someone on enough money to relax most of the time doing nothing to be able to manage the same - especially as their wages are paid by the fans who want to see them - wouldn't be such an issue if ticket prices were cheaper, but it grinds a bit when you work out that if one Chelsea player getting £120k pw was only paid £20k pw (still a fantastic wage) then match ticket prices could be reduced £2 per person, only needs a bit of sensible wage restraint and less greed across the board to reduce £40+ ticket prices to a more reasonable £10-15 - its about time that with all the money coming into football from TV and advertising/sponsorship and the inconvience to the fans that they got something out of it as well - afterall without the fans the money would disappear but we're treated like thick criminals when attending matches and milked as cash cows.
I totally agree with your last paragraph - in reality the big clubs don't want less matches, they want less matches against lower opposition so they can arrange more lucrative matches.
Personally I'm against a winter break as well, not every European League has them anyway, only those who know they'll get really bad weather every year - and even some of those got caught out like Germany whose winter break is just before xmas to Feb, yet had massive snowfalls from November (although the games still went ahead regardless). In England we never know when we'll get the bad weather if at all, it could be any when from November to March so a set break is pointless as it could well be during a period of good weather.
Or else where would it stop? Why would any fan want half time? Why would any fan not want their team to play five times a week?
Why would any fan have a reasonable expectation of players sustaining their form and performance throughout the season?
Sometimes even fans have to look a little bit more long-term than what they 'want'.
We could end up with not playing a game for two months !
as a fan i like having football over the christmas period, it's nice to go to games and also a lot of people who don't normally have the time/chance to go to a match are able to do so during this period.
You had a Winter break in the SPL a couple of years ago didn't you, & because of the Winter break the SPL started in July, with 2 fixtures a week until November.
As i've said on another thread, Winter break can only happen if the League Cup is scrapped for Prem Teams[& that won't happen any time soon]& you can't guarantee when the bad Weather will come.
If the Winter break was in force this Season, say just after the FA Cup 3rd round, people will start whinging why Clubs can't play the rearranged fixtures, & Clubs will just arrange Friendlies overseas,
For me it just breaks up the season. Allows players to rest, go away etc.
Clubs taking their players somewhere hot to train and maybe have one or two exhibition matches will do them the world of good. Alex Ferguson has done that twice. Once back in the 1999/00 season in that World Club Cup nonsense and the second more recently a break in Dubai, I think it was.
Worked wonders.
'I work this many hours so footballers should play whenever they're told'. Where's the logic? Some policemen are on call 24 hours a day, why not force cup games to happen at 2am on 20 minutes notice also?
Comparing football to 'real' jobs is pointless considering one 40 hour per week job may have no relation to another (why should I be allowed to sit on a chair in an office when gardeners are doing hard physical work?), and only used when people want to gripe about how priveleged footballers are and blah blah.
Which leads me to the following 'we pay their wages!' stuff:
You're being forced to do absolutely nothing. Don't like making people rich? You can withdraw your contribution.
Let's say a team plays three times in a week and loses the last game after looking completely burned out. How does money make a single bit of difference? They're not Six Million Dollar Men, we can't rebuild them even if we did have the technology.
Playing football at a high level is stressful on the body of an athlete - deciding that 'well they make loads, they should be able to play loads' is complete crap.
I wasen't comparing to those working 40 hours per week only, but those doing 40 hours per week AND playing 2 or 3 times a week for their local sides, plus another couple of evenings training - when I was younger it was normal to do a 9-5 job 5 days a week, training Tues & Thurs evening, and matches Weds and Sats plus sunday league football. Granted it wasen't at a high level, but with no 40 hour job to do and plenty of resting time, then 2-3 90 min games some weeks dosen't seem unreasonable - it used to be the norm anyway before the EPL, 7 subs and squads, and still is in the lower divisions - it's only the top flight rich clubs and players that seem to whinge about it and they've already had competition rules changed to help them.
Surely that's something to consider?
I did say that they play at a higher level, but they also get lots more time to rest. Look at other sports - its not uncommon for tennis players to have a 2 or 3 hour match on consecutive days and 3 or 4 a week, olyimpic athletes doing 4 or 5 hours training a day with sessions before and after work in some cases - what makes footballers so precious that they can't be expected to do it? Afterall everyone in football knew what to expect and what was expected of them before joining the profession so if they didn't want to do it they had the choice or don't now they can always quit.
Tennis players and athletes suffer their share of injuries and exhaustion, and that's without the glaring difference of their sports not being contact sports which increase the likelihood of physical stress by a large amount.
I agree with you up to a point - but dosen't it kind of defeat the purpose of having a break - surely the whole point of a winter break is to give players a rest and not play any games.
Not really. Many are paid their high salaries because they are among the best of the best. Supposed men at the peak of their athleticism.
To be unable to play 3 times in a week where the fixture card can possibly require it, or unable to play in the snow when players in other countries continue, tends to indicate a question mark over whether they are worthy of the salary - similar to how an often injured player would find himself on a pay as you play contract.
If it wasn't quite evident that tiredness does become a factor, nobody would have ever mentioned it. Bringing up how wages = hypothetical levels of consistency is moot.