Soccer is a club sport. Healthy clubs with well-constructed squads training together year-round. Maybe international soccer has some coherent technical projects, we don’t know - frankly, we don’t want to know.
But if it’s going to impact the New York Red Bulls, we’re contractually required to write about it. As the Red Bulls and the rest of Major League Soccer are increasingly learning, there’s a catch to acquiring high-quality talent. Much like the rest of society, the international soccer calendar is creeping back to normality in 2021, with the full restart of packed qualification programs amidst widely-disrupted league schedules leaving clubs around the world bracing for some of their top players to be away for extended periods playing in qualifiers and tournaments alike.