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Pastimes : Soccer World Cup MLS Euro Champions League etc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: X Y Zebra who wrote (1405)	6/14/2002 8:26:42 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5130

I really don't think that players were rolling into the WC consciously thinking that they were too tired and beat up to play and that they didn't really want to be there. I think most of them wanted desperately to be there and had every intention of giving everything they had. The problem is that in many cases there wasn't much left to give. It's a problem that's been coming on for a while, pushed onto center stage by two things. First, the club season was unusually rugged: all of the major league races went right down to the wire, and several were decided on the last day of the season. That meant more pressure and less rest for the top players. Second, as was already pointed out, the WC started earlier than usual this year, forcing players to jump from club to country without a significant break. I don't know who made that decision or why, but there have certainly been consequences, and those consequences were really quite predictable. On one hand, the result has been a very open competition that could be won by an underdog. On the other hand, we will see very little of many of the world's top players, and what we will see will in many cases be sub-par. It's all very well to say that with the amount of money top players earn they should be prepared to give their best at all times, but you can't increase the endurance of a human body by paying it more. It is also true that if you consider the amount of playing time, football players probably earn less per actual playing minute than practically any other professional athletes (excluding baseball, since an entire season of baseball is less strenuous than a single foolball match). I don't have any solutions. I'll be curious to see if FIFA comes up with anything.