Everywhere you look in the soccer world, another team is worrying about its schedule. In England, Manchester City complained mightily about having to play in the FA Cup on a Sunday, with a Champions League game scheduled only three days later.
City manager Manuel Pellegrini said, "It's not a real game, of course. I would not pay for the ticket." Almost as a protest, his starting lineup included five players making their first appearances for the senior team. The overly youthful side was duly hammered 5-1 by Chelsea.
On our own side of the pond, MLS Commissioner Don Garber was complaining about the "disadvantage" of the CONCACAF Champions League schedule. Though MLS doesn't kick off until next Sunday, the quarterfinals of the CCL began this week — and all four remaining MLS teams are matched with Liga MX teams that are in the middle of their season. In the first leg of the two-game quarterfinals, the four MLS teams went winless, and all four are decided underdogs to advance to the semifinals after this week's rematches.
Mexican teams, meanwhile, do well in the Champions League but play half-strength teams in their own domestic cup competition as a matter of course. Not to be outdone, every year a handful of MLS teams basically ignore the U.S. Open Cup because the burden of a few extra games is too much for their squads to bear.
Even Minnesota United, with few other midweek games on the schedule, has lost to lower-division sides in the U.S. Open Cup twice in the past three years, in part because of the practice of resting first-team players.
Playing two games a week, with travel in between, isn't exactly easy, but winning trophies isn't supposed to be easy. For example, take Barcelona. Since a brief Christmas holiday, Barca hasn't gone more than four days without playing a match. The great Lionel Messi played in all but two of those games, a punishing stretch in which he still managed 15 goals in 14 appearances.
The whole run was capped off last week with a difficult Champions League game, away against Arsenal — and Messi played the entire game and scored both goals in a 2-0 Barcelona win.
True greatness doesn't mean showing up just once a week, or only winning once your team is into the middle of the season and comfortable, or pretending that domestic cup competitions are beneath your team. Whether in Europe or North America, competing on multiple fronts and playing more than once a week is a test, not a scheduling flaw.
