The physical preparation has been a determining factor in the Club World Cup, played in the summer of the United States, with part of the games started at noon and with thermometers often above the 30 ° C. The issue has been associated with the difficulty encountered by some of the main European teams in the competition, with defeats considered surprising.
It is undeniable that European team athletes are used to acting at milder temperatures. Nor can you contest the fact that they come from a full season and compete for the World Cup at a time of year when they are usually on vacation. What cannot be said is that they are worn out because they played more than Brazilians.
Survey made by Sheet From data from the Transfermarkt site shows that the match numbers in the comparison between the European powers and those that have caused more problems, the clubs in Brazil, are very similar. This is worth in the 2025 clip and also in the entire season of football in Europe – which starts in August and is usually closed in May, with rest in June and July.
Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid arrived at the World Cup with 38 matches played by each this year, the same number of Palmeiras and Fluminense. Just behind appears another representative of the old continent, the continental inter-champion Inter Milan, and Flamengo, with 37. Botafogo entered the field 36 times before boarding the United States.
Even if included in the account the duels of the first half of the 2024/25 season of European football, the calculation does not indicate a difference in wear that justifies some of the zebras in US territory. PSG played 58 times from August 1st until the start of the World Cup, against 60 of Botafogo, who defeated him. Inter has made 59 matches, against 61 of Fluminense, his tormentor.
Flamengo, knocked down in the round of 16 for a suffocating marking, had to face a lower mile opponent. Bayern arrived at the World Cup with only 51 games in the 2024/25 season, the result of relatively early eliminations in the Champions League and the German Cup and a Minor National League with 18 clubs. In the same period, the red-black team played 65 times.
These numbers, of course, do not tell the whole story, and tiredness is not merely measured by the number of matches. The players of the clubs in Brazil entered vacation at the end of the last round of the Brazilian Championship, on December 8, and re -presented a month later. Manchester City, for example, played in the English Championship on December 29 and January 4.
Even athletes from European teams that are not in the Club World Cup complained of their realization from June 14 to July 13. The complaint points to the accumulated wear of the 2024/25 season and what promises to be a long season 2025/26, to be finalized at the World Cup, selections, also in the summer of North America.
“Giving up the holidays to play something thanks is very bad,” said Barcelona striker Raphinha, who has not qualified for the World Cup. “Marquinhos and Beraldo, for example, played the Champions final for PSG, then presented themselves to the Brazilian team and are now in this tournament. They have not stopped. Many say it is an excuse, but giving up vacation is complicated.”
“The wear is also mental,” he told Sheet The physical trainer Altair Ramos. “The European season would be finishing. Or would have ended, in case, right? Ours is in the middle. These are hard, very intensity games. And what also influences wear are the environmental factors. They are playing at a very high temperature,” he added.
Today Performance Coordinator of the São Paulo Base Categories, Altair was in the Tricolor Technical Commission of the 1992 and 1993 World Championship, led by Telê Santana. At the auxiliary time of trainer Moraci Sant’Anna, he worked so that athletes were in the best condition to face Barcelona on December 13 and Milan on December 12.
“It was the opposite. It was at the end of the season for us, they were in the middle. But fortunately the team behaved well, the players understood the spirit,” he said, showing his pride and remembering that the intercontinental tournaments in their different formats were traditionally disputed at the end of the year.
In the new Club World Cup, it’s different. It is the European teams that arrive at the end of the season. But they cannot say that they arrive with more baggage matches, because the argument is not sustained.
