THE bleating about too many matches is one racing certainty for next season.
But before Prem bosses start to moan, they maybe need to look at the real killer schedule they have ALREADY signed up to.
Just the 64 matches, in 15 countries, in the space of 26 days.
Top-flight teams crisscrossing the world more than SIX times between them — and clocking up a staggering 170,000 air miles.
Before a serious ball has been kicked.
Players being run ragged? Too many matches? A danger to health?
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Absolutely . . . 100 per cent.
But the reality is that this season’s summer-friendly calendar shows, once again, that when it comes down to it, what really matters to club chiefs is cash.
The chance to sell the club name and — more importantly — the club shirts and other merchandise.
In the USA, yes. But also Asia and Australia, as well as the odd European jaunt.
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Once you are in the Prem, promotion means getting out there to spread your commercial wings.
And if that means dragging your players halfway around the planet and back, for a series of dead-end games that mean nothing then so be it.
Of the 20 top-flight clubs returning to the training ground in preparation for the next ten months of an unrelenting slog, no fewer than 15 — three-quarters of them — have booked in for long-haul journeys.
Nobody will be flying further than Tottenham, who start off with a day in the air to get to Perth in Western Australia where they come up against West Ham.
That is before a six-hour jaunt to Thailand, a hop to Singapore and then another 14 hours back to London.
Then again, given that Spurs have no European football to look forward to, it might be nice to get all that nonsense out of the way for the season before the real stuff actually starts.
But Tottenham’s near 20,000-mile journey is not that much of an outlier — and it should give new boss Ange Postecoglou plenty of time to get to know his players.
Between them, the Prem sides will be playing matches in Australia, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore and the US.
That is as well as the games closer to home in Germany, France, Switzerland, Spain, Norway, Holland, Scotland, Ireland and on English soil.
The busiest, unsurprisingly, will be Manchester United.
Erik ten Hag has agreed to a seven-match schedule in the space of 25 days, clocking up a mere 15,000 miles in the process.
United start by playing Leeds in Oslo, then go to Edinburgh before flying across the Atlantic to meet Arsenal in New York’s Red Bull Arena — likely venue for the 2026 World Cup final.
But that is just the start. United are taking a big enough squad to play twice in 24 hours, one side meeting Hollywood favourites
Wrexham in San Diego, California, with the other playing Real Madrid in the Texan city of Houston the next day.
They will then all meet up in Las Vegas — what goes on in Vegas, stays in Vegas — before flying home and then popping over the Irish Sea to play Athletic Bilbao in Dublin.
For Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp and Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola, the fixture programme is the one area where they occasionally see eye to eye.
But can they really complain when the Merseysiders happily signed up to go to Germany and then Singapore, while the champions head to Japan and South Korea ahead of their Community Shield Wembley date with Arsenal?
Six of the clubs are even playing in the Prem’s own “Summer Series”, with Aston Villa, Brentford, Brighton, Chelsea, Fulham and Newcastle shuffling between five cities on the eastern seaboard of America.
Games at the homes of NFL teams Washington Commanders, New York Jets, Philadelphia Eagles and Atlanta Falcons, as well as MLS side Orlando City’s Exploria Stadium, mean plenty of short flights.
And while teams will use coaches to travel between training bases and the grounds in Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey, what about the whole green issue?
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When it comes to carbon offsetting, the Prem clubs need to plant an entire forest. A very big one.
Yet the wear and tear may be the bigger concern for the players.
It looks like an awful lot of travelling — and ensures that any managerial complaints will land on deaf ears.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
