Busting football player workload myths

It’s FA Cup final weekend here in England, and this year’s match-up has the potential to be a memorable one.

For Manchester City, the game offers a chance to avoid a trophyless season, after bumpy form locked them out of the title race some months ago and Real Madrid saw them off in the Champions League. For a team that has notched up seven Premier League titles, six League Cup victories, two FA Cup trophies and one Champions League in the past 12 years, a barren year would come as a shock to the system.

In contrast, their opponents today have never won a trophy. In fact, Crystal Palace will only be making their third final appearance in history. Bookies make City the firm favourites, but with a Palace side brimming with exciting young talent and an impressive head coach, there is potential for a surprise. You can read more about how the south Londoners have recently punched above their weight here.

This week we’re running you through the highlights of our Business of Football report, including some surprising stats about player workload. Plus we look at whether Barcelona’s stadium project can pull the club out of its financial hole. Do read on — Josh Noble, sports editor

Too fast or too frequent: what the data show on player workload

The issue of overworked players has been rising up the agenda in football in recent months. Unions complain that footballers are being asked to play too much as competition organisers scrabble for more TV money by adding more and more matches. Injuries, they say, are getting more common as a result. This summer’s Club World Cup proved a breaking point for some, with Fifpro, the global union representing footballers worldwide, launching legal action against Fifa, football’s global governing body.

But are players really playing more now than in the past? The FT’s chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch and FT columnist Simon Kuper did some digging recently, and found some surprising results. Here’s what they discovered:

• Players aren’t playing more matches or more minutes. In fact, average minutes played appears to be completely flat since 2000.

• Nor are players running any further during a match than in the past.

• There is no correlation between number of matches played and the number of injuries in any given season.

However:

• The way football is being played has changed enormously, with the number of passes and sprints rising sharply.

• Every team plays with a different level of intensity — that is the greater indicator for injury risk.

Much of this can be neatly summed up with the following chart. In short, players aren’t playing more, they are playing harder.

You can read the full piece here. It is part of our Business of Football special report, a collection of articles looking at some of the trends underpinning the world’s most popular sport.

Other highlights from the report include:

Champions League shake-up pays off as battle for viewers intensifies: How Uefa’s rejig of its flagship tournament boosted fan engagement and revenues ahead of competition from Fifa’s expanded Club World Cup

How Fantasy Premier League became a global obsession: For millions of fans, the statistics and stress of FPL are now an essential part of the experience of England’s top-tier competition

Multipurpose, premium and always open — stadiums of the future: Why clubs are eyeing revenue-generating projects, including deluxe facilities for wealthy fans, hotels and even plans for urban regeneration

Giorgio Chiellini’s second act: the star defender on becoming an executive at Juventus after fulfilling his childhood dreams on the pitch

Could AI discover the next Neymar? Youngsters in Brazil are hoping to get spotted by using video apps that employ mass talent-scouting systems

Digital platforms are fuelling the rise of short-form football: Newcomers are tearing up conventions by launching faster, condensed games aimed at younger online audiences

Can Camp Nou fix Barcelona’s money troubles?

FC Barcelona were crowned Spanish champions on Thursday night with a 2-0 win against local rivals Espanyol. It’s been a successful season for the Catalan club, having also won the Copa del Rey and coming within seconds of the Champions League final. Young talents — such as Lamine Yamal — have made the blaugrana one of the most watchable teams in Europe this year.

Off the pitch things have been rocky, to say the least. The club has been in a bitter struggle with La Liga for months over its finances. Last month the league slashed Barcelona’s budget, meaning that summer signings will be impossible without new sources of revenues.

Much of the short-term pressure stems from the club’s €1.5bn stadium renovation, which is now more than two years in and still has a fair way to go. During the building work, the team has been playing at the Olympic Stadium, which has a much lower capacity and zero cachet. The club says the temporary move is costing €100mn a year in lost revenue, which in turn has prompted La Liga to reduce the team’s budget. Efforts to counter that with asset sales have run aground.

The Camp Nou project will only nudge capacity up from 99,000 to 105,000, but a major modernisation of the stadium was long overdue.

And those new seats aren’t just for your average punter — all the additional capacity will be for VIPs. Previously, Barcelona only had around 2,000 premium seats, all of which were taken up by long-term sponsors. Once complete, there will be 9,600 available, with the most expensive seat forecast to generate €81,000 a season, up from a previous high of €12,000.

High-end hospitality — plus improvements to the rest of the stadium — are expected to lift stadium revenue from a pre-renovation high of €229mn to at least €350mn. Some at the club think the number could be significantly higher.

While that all sounds very promising, the club does face a couple of pressing concerns.

First of all, the building work is behind schedule. The club originally hoped to return late last year, and now says this summer is the target, although that too could slip. Some have questioned the choice of contractor — Limak, a Turkish construction company with limited experience in major European stadiums. Every delay prolongs Barcelona’s depressed revenue, while concert bookings later in the year at the Olympic Stadium mean there is a hard cut off for moving back home. Time is running out.

The other worry is how much extra cash will be left once debt repayments have been factored in. In 2022, Barcelona borrowed €1.45bn in a private placement deal arranged by Goldman Sachs to fund the project. Payments are due to begin next summer, in theory once the new Camp Nou is humming at full capacity. A big chunk of it, almost €600mn, is due to be repaid in 2028.

Executives remain optimistic. Once the stadium is complete, asset sales — such as marketing rights for VIP boxes — will be easier, providing lump sums to pay down debt. Higher revenue will loosen the budget constraints and keep the team competitive on the pitch. The club and its advisers are primed for any opportunities to refinance at lower rates.

But there remains a lingering worry that Barcelona has embarked on a costly and disruptive infrastructure project that may yet leave the club’s finances exactly where they were before, if not worse off.

Highlights

• President Donald Trump wants his Turnberry golf course to host the Open. But transport issues in the surrounding area are undermining those ambitions. FT reporters visited the area to find out more.

• The owners of the San Francisco 49ers are to sell around 6 per cent of the team to a group of investors with a valuation of $8.5bn, a new high for the sport.

• The Portland Trailblazer NBA franchise has been put up for sale by the estate of late owner Paul Allen, who died in 2018.

• Alexis Ohanian, the Reddit co-founder and husband of tennis star Serena Williams, has acquired a minority stake in the Chelsea Women’s team. Ohanian, who has invested in various sporting properties in recent years, will pay around £20mn for a stake of just under 10 per cent.

• Long-suffering Chicago White Sox fans have had something to celebrate this week — the revelation that the new Pope, Cardinal Robert Prevost, is one of them. In fact, someone even managed to track down a shot of him in the stands during the 2005 World Series.

(After the) Final whistle

https://x.com/BBCMOTD/status/1922991639972196357

This week we saw one of those rare gems — a long-distance goal celebration. Ajax had been nine points clear at the top of the Eredivisie with just five games to go, but PSV had been chasing them down. On Wednesday night, Ajax conceded a goal in the 99th minute against Groningen to draw 2-2. The result put PSV top of the league — here’s the moment the news reached the stands at the end of their game against Heracles.