A few days before the Champions League Final, FIFPro, the body that represents players' unions from around the world, gathered folks in Paris for the release of their new study on player workloads. It won't surprise you that, at the highest level, top players are seriously overworked.
Seventy-two players appeared in 55 or more games -- the upper limit, according to sports scientists and high performance coaches cited in the study -- in 2020-21. They also spoke of something called the "critical zone" -- defined as playing back-to-back matches with less than five days off between them -- when injuries are more likely to occur and fatigue and stress build up.