Ex-Rangers star Joe Aribo is big example of FIFA excess | OneFootball

In season 21/22, former Rangers star Joe Aribo (now Southampton) clocked up pretty much a borderline world record at the time by making an absurd 70 appearances for club and country, in numbers that were eye-opening to say the least.

It was a bit of an infamous number, because as well as making a staggering 57 Rangers appearances, he clocked up 13 for Nigeria too.

And that topic of overplayed footballers has appeared again amid the latest (completely unnecessary) international break, with Erling Haaland’s words from July resonating loudly:

“We all saw in the Euros how tired people were. You could see the level, you could see even in people’s faces how tired they were of football, if you can say it that way. That’s how it will be as well this season, not in the start, though maybe for some because some will not get a lot of vacation. But that’s the way we’re going now, I don’t think we can be sharp in every single game. We can try, but it’s difficult to be sharp if you play over 70 games a year.”

England’s Phil Foden made 72 appearances but was in 77 squads, while Julian Alvarez was in a shocking 78 squads and made one less appearance, all of which harks back to Aribo’s similarly absurd numbers.

Now, the easy way to dismiss this is the uneducated nonsense of ‘aw it’s just a bunch of young men kickin’ a baw. Ah kid dae that when ah wiz 20 way mah eyes clased’.

In other words, because it’s just football, they should be fine.

The reality is this ‘business’ is not just football – the sport itself is only part of it, but the amount of work and sacrifice and discipline footballers have to put in to get into the game and stay there is massive, and it’s completely unrecognised by most fans.

And these men (and women to an extent) are being over-stretched by FIFA (and UEFA) and treated as an asset commodity, not a human being, and while, yes, the sport richly rewards them financially with massive wages, humans are still just that, human, whether they get £1,000pw or £100,000pw.

Haaland and others aren’t wrong – while he’s not being as slamming of the situation as some, the fact is it’s a performance-based sport, like most, and the players are being asked to play for club and country an extraordinary amount.

They are fatigued from the excess, and in all fairness fans don’t exactly favour all the constant international breaks either.

We’re not sure anyone particularly loves the new Champions League or Europa and Conference league formats either – that just adds more matches too.

Ex-Rangers man Joe Aribo is not alone in playing far too many games in a season.