Player Workload Monitoring (PWM) – Match load insights from the 2023/24 season

Following the conclusion of the CONMEBOL Copa America (‘Copa America’) and the UEFA European Championship (‘Euros’), an update to the Player Workload Monitoring (PWM) platform has been finalised to include all match and travel load data related to the 2023/24 football season. This ideal ‘line in the sand’ moment means now is the perfect time to take stock and look at some key insights from the season just passed.

Match Load Ranking

In July 2024, the relationship between FIFPRO & Football Benchmark was further strengthened through the joint launch of a dedicated men’s Player Workload Monitoring (PWM) platform that contains in-depth player workload data and visualizations of 1,500 of the world’s most well-known men’s footballers.

As part of the 2023/24 season-ending update to the PWM platform, let us look at the list of top 20 players ranked by club and national team appearances; they are the ones who played the most in our sample. Of the 20, a little over half (11 players or 55%) played in the English Premier League (EPL) during the 2023/24 season. The EPL is followed by LaLiga with just four players (20%), the Saudi Pro League with two (10%) and the German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A and Turkish Süper Lig each having a sole representative. These proportions show that 17 (85%) of the top 20 players are from one of the European ‘Big Five’ leagues, meaning that players with the highest match loads typically play at the very top level.

The trend of significant EPL match load is even more evident when narrowing the selection to the top 10 as eight of them played last season in the English first division. The other two players who had the most club and national team appearances were Federico Valverde (Real Madrid CF) and Kerem Aktürkoglu (Galatasaray SK); both of which featured in summer national team tournaments and had extended runs in UEFA club competitions (UCC) prior to that.

At the top of this list are Phil Foden (Manchester City FC), Luis Díaz and Darwin Nu?ez (Liverpool FC), who all made 72 combined club and national team appearances in the 2023/2024 season.

Assessing the same set of Top 20 players based on their total minutes played during the 2023/2024 season, we find that Cristiano Ronaldo (Al-Nassr FC), William Saliba (Arsenal FC), Saud Abdulhamid (Al-Hilal SFC), Declan Rice (Arsenal FC) and Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool FC) all played well over 6,000 minutes for club and country.

From a minutes per appearance perspective, Ronaldo comes in first with 97 minutes per match, while Saliba and Abdulhamid round off the podium (94 minutes per app). This suggests that these players not only made a substantial number of appearances but also accumulated a lot of on-pitch minutes, as well. In comparison, players such as Cody Gakpo and Darwin Nu?ez (Liverpool FC), only registered 65 minutes per appearance suggesting that they were rotated more often than other players in the Top 20.

Some notable players just missed being mentioned in the Top 20 despite having a remarkably high match load in 2023/24. One such player is Bruno Fernandes (Manchester United FC), who made 60+ club and national team appearances for the sixth season in a row.

Back-to-Back (B2B) Match Load

A match?is considered to be ‘back-to-back’ (‘B2B’) if a player has made an appearance in it (played any minutes) and his previous match appearance ended within the preceding five days (or 120 hours). A B2B streak is therefore the number of consecutive times a B2B match occurs.

Back-to-back match load matters because it demonstrates the time between matches played and the level of rest time a player can (or cannot) receive. If a player has long streaks of B2B matches or has a high percentage of their appearances in this category, then the likelihood of an injury occurring may also increase as their ability to recover is diminished.

From the 2023/24 season, three players who accumulated particularly long B2B streaks were Berat Djimsiti (Atalanta BC), Bruno Guimar?es (Newcastle United FC) and Min-Jae Kim (FC Bayern München).

Djimsiti’s B2B streak (18) started in late March 2024 and is a result of a combination of factors: ?Atalanta’s successful run in the Europa League, a down-to-the-wire battle for European places in the Italian Serie A, and some injuries to other centre-backs in the squad at the time (e.g. Tolói and Kola?inac) which made rotation difficult.

Similarly, Bruno Guimar?es’s B2B streak (16) stems from a lack of depth in his position at the time as Newcastle’s midfield options were impacted due to injuries and suspensions (e.g. Willock and Tonali). Additionally, Guimar?es’s overall squad importance and the presence of high stakes Champions League matches meant that his B2B streak built up towards the end of 2023. Also, during this period, he played three games for Brazil which required him to travel to and from South America as part of FIFA World Cup qualifying.

Lastly, there is Kim’s B2B streak of 14 games which ran from October until November 2023. During this period, injuries to other centre-backs at FC Bayern (e.g. De Ligt and Upamecano) meant that he could not be rotated very often. Moreover, from an international perspective, Kim played four games for the South Korean national team during this time as part of World Cup qualifying and friendlies, which meant additional long-distance back-and-forth travel for the player.

A key driver behind such B2B streaks is that many teams rarely rotate their squads and instead rely on a core group that is almost always on the pitch. This seems to suggest that there ought to be more balanced squad management, giving more playing time to a wider group of players. However, with the high-pressure environment of top-level professional football and the increasing number of fixtures in the calendar, it is unlikely that managers and their clubs will voluntarily forego many opportunities to play their key players, sometimes despite their apparent fatigue and injuries.

Looking Ahead to 2024/25 and 2025/26

With the 2023/24 season recently concluding with the finals of the Copa America and Euros in mid-July, the 2024/25 season wasted no time in commencing as many clubs started their UCC qualifiers and pre-season tours almost straight away. This rapid restart of the football calendar does not seem to offer sufficient rest time for players, and this is unlikely to change with the upcoming changes to the football calendar.

Take the example of Federico Valverde, a prominent player for Uruguay: he played 13 out of 15 potential matches for his country across the 2023/24 season. Similarly, during his club season, Valverde featured in 58 matches out of Real Madrid’s 59 fixtures. Therefore, across both club and national teams, Valverde participated in 71 of a possible 74 matches (96%). This equates to around 1.4 matches a week throughout the entire season.

Looking forward to the 2024/25 and 2025/26 seasons, if Valverde makes a similar proportion of matches for club and country as the 2023/24 season, his appearances are projected to be 76 and 77, respectively. This projection also assumes that his teams would make it to the final of every competition they participate in.

The projected increase primarily stems from the format changes of the FIFA Club World Cup (now played in the summer with teams playing a maximum of seven matches instead of two and the number of teams participating increasing from 7 to 32) and the UEFA Champions League (which has increased the maximum possible matched played by a team from 13 to 17 and with the number of participants increasing from 32 to 36 teams). Additionally, at the end of 2025/26, Valverde will likely play in the expanded, 48-team FIFA World Cup, meaning even more international matches to play, as well. Ultimately, this gruelling schedule would mean that the player – like many of his peers – would not have a summer without a major club or national team tournament in the near future.

The competition restructuring and expansions of FIFA’s World Cup, Club World Cup and UEFA’s various club competitions along with many regional competitions will mean that several elite players could have extra fixture requirements in the upcoming seasons. This will add to an already packed match calendar and workload burden, decreasing the opportunity for proper rest and recovery and requiring players to travel more often to fulfil the fixture requirements.

The PWM Tool of FIFPRO and Football Benchmark will continue keeping track of these workload developments and the evolution of the match calendar over the coming years.