The Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and the Eredivisie all have produced some of the greats of the modern game and all have a winter break. I personally feel that the English Premier League should have a winter break, not only for a club teams, but for our country! English clubs play 38 premier league games; we have 2 cups (the League Cup and the FA Cup) along with Europa League and Champions League football for those lucky and skilled enough to do so! So that is a massive amount of football our teams and players play per season. Now if there is an international tournament during the off season then there is little time for these players to rest, and during such tournament they could get burnout resulting in yet another fail on the biggest scale! I am by no means blaming the long and heavy season on our previous summer tournament fail, but I defy anyone to say that it wasn’t one of the major contributing factors.
So, how would it work, having a two week break in our season? Well take this season for example, there is the regular Saturday games on the 17th of December, if we then allowed for a 2 week break the fixtures would start again on the 31st of December, now during that 2 week period there has only been a total of 2 games missed, we could fit them in mid week at almost any time. Or start the season a week earlier and get rid of that useless international friendly that has been put in. However that would disrupt the charity/community shield, so I suggest we make that a week earlier also and clubs involved in that match can use it as one of their pre season games, the final pre season game.
Now to get to the answer of my question, does the Premier League need a winter break? In my opinion YES it does, and I base this opinion on that so many top flight players and managers are calling for this and the fact that 78 players were injured before the end of February in the EPL last season! Now I am not saying a winter break would stop players getting injured, but how many of us as fans have seen a player go down in those vital stages of the Premier League and thought “we’re screwed” or “please get up ok” or even the extreme of “that’s us down now then” I think that a winter break would rest our players, re charge there batteries and mount an attack on the premier league like it were a new season. A winter break may not be a concern to for example Chelsea and Man City as they have 2 teams that are of great talent each, but it does to those fans and teams that depend heavily on one or two outstanding players in their team and I feel a winter break would keep these players fresh and give other teams a chance at success towards the end of the season. If nothing else it makes the closing weeks more interesting. I also think that a winter break would benefit our national side because players wouldn’t be as ‘burnt out’ after a season had finished, which we saw recently with Jack Wilshere and the drama of him not being able to play in the U21 European championship, and you have to think that with him and Andy Carroll (one of the victims of the 78 injured) England would have done a lot better than they did.
Now a lot of you may be reading this and thinking that you like your Boxing Day game, it’s a tradition etc, and I sympathize with that as I love my away day games on Boxing Day or alternatively the home day game in your own city/town. But think about all the times you have seen a player go down at a crucial point of the season or watched our national side struggle once more on the big stage. Surely if these things can be prevented a winter break is worth a try? Even if it is only a 2/3 year trial period!
Saacey
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