The Champions League returns this week and, for many, the most thrilling football tournament in Europe and arguably the world starts now. The wheat has been separated from the chaff, the Juves and Bayerns from the Qarabags and Maribors. As the first country in the history of the competition to have five teams through to the last 16, England’s interest in the knockout stages has never been greater, even if José Mourinho believes it will end sooner rather than later because of the absence of a winter break in the football calendar.
Speaking in November, the Manchester United manager poo-poohed the notion that this might be an English team’s time to end a barren Champions League spell dating back to Chelsea’s win on penalties against Bayern Munich in 2012. “I don’t think so because I always say the Champions League only starts in February,” Mourinho said. “And in February, the English teams are after December and January where we can play 20 matches over two months and the Germans, the French, the Spanish, the Italians, they all come from a winter break.”
Mourinho has a point, but not one that stands up to a huge amount of scrutiny. Yes, his United team played 15 matches during the months of December and January, compared with the nine competitive games contested by Bayern Munich during the same period of time. But while players in Europe’s other major leagues were given the opportunity to regroup and rest weary, aching bones, they were not exactly idle.
The reigning Serie A champions, Juventus, played 12 matches in December and January, while the French league leaders, Paris Saint-Germain, lined up 14 times. The European champions, Real Madrid, played 14 times, just one match fewer than Manchester United. Admittedly two of those games were in the World Club Championship, but despite being unencumbered by such a distraction the La Liga leaders, Barcelona, also played 13 times across the months of December and January.
It is clearly the Germans who maximise their downtime and their performances at major tournaments – seven World Cup or European Championship wins among a total of 18 podium finishes – is grist to the mill for those who believe England’s chances of success would be enhanced if physically and mentally drained players were given a mid-season opportunity to rest. If nothing else, as a cynical colleague observed on the Guardian’s Football Weekly podcast, the introduction of a winter break would leave England’s perennial underachievers with one less excuse for their now customary summer failures.
That introduction seems a significant step closer following a week in which the prospect of easing festive fixture congestion “while also giving players a mid‑season break” was referenced in the documents sent to broadcasters throwing their hats in the ring for the next Premier League television‑rights deal, covering 2019-2022. Mindful that whichever TV companies secure the rights are unlikely to be cock-a-hoop at the prospect of having no football to beam into our pubs and living rooms for a fortnight, the Premier League is understood to be open to the idea of a staggered approach that would give every club a week off while ensuring advertisers, broadcasters and armchair aficionados enjoy no such respite from the grind.
The longest of the sabbaticals in Europe’s major leagues, the German break – die winterpause, as it is known – lasted 22 days this season, stretching from 20 December to 12 January.
It was shorter than usual, in order to give Germany’s players another rest between the end of their World Cup defence and the start of next season. After giving their footballers and coaching staff 12 days off, a period of time in which most of their English counterparts played four matches, the majority of German clubs headed to warm‑weather training camps to begin their preparations for the rückrunde, the second half of the Bundesliga season.
Bayern Munich went to Qatar and several others travelled to the sunny climes of Spain, while Hoffenheim and RB Leipzig were among a minority of teams who elected to stay at home. “It wasn’t a long break,” the Bayern manager, Jupp Heynckes, said. “But we could have a rest and I hope we’ve all been able to recharge the batteries.”
Most Premier League managers would kill for the kind of three‑week mid-season interval Heynckes considered a mite short, and the benefits to jaded players can hardly be overstated. Whether or not the introduction of such a break in England would enhance the country’s prospects of winning the World Cup is open to debate, although Gareth Southgate seems unconvinced.
“When I look at the league there are as many players from abroad playing here in our league, if not more, so they have the same problem and maybe we can over-egg that,” he said in December.
Like Mourinho, the England manager has a point – but not a particularly salient one. Of the 23-man Germany squad who won the World Cup in 2014, just four players were with Premier League clubs and did not benefit from the winter break enjoyed by fellow squad members employed by clubs in Germany, Italy and Spain.
