The aftermath of the Club World Cup? The Guardian: Palmer and others have been injured this summer, does FIFA really care?

October 7th The Guardian wrote an article that the Club World Cup after the expansion of the army has caused serious consequences. Top players have almost no rest time this summer after a long season, resulting in frequent injuries.

For example, Chelsea player Palmer is the most typical victim. He played 57 games for the club and the national team in the 2023-24 season, and has been out for three consecutive summers, and was eventually absent due to a groin injury for a long time.

Chelsea coach Maresca believes that the team's current injury wave (Colville's ACL has torn, and Drapp and others have also fallen one after another) "may be some consequences of the Club World Cup." This view is supported by the Global Players Guild report, which states that players in the competition face higher risk of injury due to lack of adequate pre-season preparation. The monitoring report concluded that players who participated in the Club World Cup after completing the domestic league, like hundreds of players, were not fully prepared for pre-season, which affected their performance levels and increased the risk of injury.

This injury crisis is not an isolated case. Arsenal's Maduai was absent for two months with a knee injury; Paris Saint-Germain's main players (Marquinhos, Dembele, etc.) suffered injuries; Arnold, who had just transferred to Real Madrid, torn his hamstring after Liverpool's championship season and the Club World Cup; and Bellingham also postponed the necessary shoulder surgery due to the tight schedule.

Klopp had previously denounced the Club World Cup as "the worst idea in history" and warned that it would leave players with no recovery time. Although some people argue that injuries are inevitable, forcing more games to be added on the existing basis is undoubtedly a damaging the "product" of football itself. Although there are seemingly unaffected examples like Igor Jesus of Nottingham Forest, the intensity and schedule of the Brazilian league they are in is completely different from that of the European giants.

The reality is that teams like Chelsea are obviously exhausted physically and mentally, which has become a warning to the entire football world. However, the real question is whether FIFA really cares when facing the cruel reality of players falling down?