Busy schedule undermines UK's international efforts

	Steve Gerrard's play on New Year's Day helped Liverpool to a win but may cost the English national team down the road. Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images
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A few years ago I went to see Sven Goran Eriksson, who at the time was the England national team coach. He showed me a power point presentation he had prepared, illustrating how countries in which there is no midseason break tend to underperform internationally. He was going to use it to persuade the English powers-that-be to introduce a winter break around the turn of the year (as is customary in most European leagues).

No prizes for guessing how he fared. Eriksson was laughed out of the room. Rather than give the players some time off in midseason, the Premiership goes in the opposite direction, doubling their fixtures. This season, most clubs played on Dec. 23, 26, 30 and Jan. 1: four games in nine days. Meanwhile, the rest of Europe's top leagues enjoyed breaks ranging from two weeks (Spain) to six weeks (Germany).

Eriksson's point was that the Premiership's insistence on scheduling additional TV-friendly games during the holidays ends up penalizing English-based players who find themselves staggering tired and battle-wearied into international competitions. Cynics -- especially now that the Swede is about as popular as the flu, at least in England -- will say that it's just an excuse.

But take a step back and ask yourself how many Premiership stars played well at Germany 2006? To a man, from Steven Gerrard to Thierry Henry and from Frank Lampard to Cristiano Ronaldo, most underperformed at the World Cup compared to what we're used to seeing, week in, week out. Which suggests that Eriksson may have a point.

Footballers are athletes, of course, but, as Giampiero Ventrone, the legendary former Juventus fitness coach told me, they are unlike most other athletes. First, most athletic training follows a natural peak-and-trough cycle. You plan your physical work in such a way that you peak a certain number of times per year. For a world-class rower in an Olympic year it may mean peaking just once; for a boxer, three or four times (based on when his fights are scheduled); for a track and field star, the peaks will coincide with whatever Grand Prix events he or she has lined up.

The body is not a machine. You can only reach your peak potential every so often, which is why the most finely-tuned athletes only compete a limited number of times per year. But footballers are expected to turn out and be at their best 10 months out of the year. Simply put, it's impossible.

Soccer players also face a schedule unlike most other team sports. Most top teams play twice a week. It may not seem like a lot compared to, say, Major League Baseball (with its 162-game schedule) or the National Basketball Association, but those are very different sports. Both have offseasons which are twice as long and, as far as baseball is concerned, much of the time is spent standing around (come to think of it, some NBA games are like that, too). NFL football is more physically punishing than soccer, dictating a smaller 16 regular-season game slate. Even then, the NFL requires a different kind of physical effort: a series of short bursts (over a maximum of 35, 40 minutes per week) compared to the constant running of soccer.

And yet the irony is, according to Ventrone, that footballers train a lot less than athletes in individual sports. In fact, compared to swimmers and runners, they are relative softies.