If Paolo Maldini, Franz Beckenbauer and Franco Baresi stood in defence, imagine how tough it would be for the opposition team to find a way through it. Now replace the three legends with the climatic heat, a gruelling calendar and burnout threats, and think how difficult it will be for a modern-day elite footballer to beat these ‘defenders’ as they strive to make a mark at the 2026 World Cup.
Just like the rewards, the challenges for a top-tier footballer have also increased by several notches. The world now awaits an exhibition of that struggle at the showpiece event of the game that will be enacted in the USA, Canada and Mexico this time.
The aspect of competitiveness in almost every sphere has zoomed up to catastrophic levels in the modern world. Competitive sport has not escaped its tentacles. Football, the most popular sport that attracts an insane number of eyeballs with its top tournaments, is too tempting a business model for the powers that control it to ignore.
As a result, the idea is to stretch the game, precisely its business side, to its limit. So the Champions League becomes fatter with more teams, more matches and a complex format. And the World Cup expands to be a 48-team elephantine tournament that extends its arms as if to suck in the entire world. But while the official line is that it is an attempt to give the game a more global image — as if it needed one — one fears that political and financial factors have played a bigger role in it.
But what about the players? Weren’t they already overworked? How will they sustain in such a system which demands more and more from them every season?
Maheta Molango, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, recently said that the game was suffering because of the demands placed on “the players who make us dream”. He believes Phil Foden and Cole Palmer missed out on being in Thomas Tuchel’s World Cup-bound England squad because they were overworked.
“Unfortunately, he (Foden) is one of the victims of this crazy calendar that only makes sense for those who pursue commercial gain. This year, effectively, he has missed out on some of the biggest games because he was not fit. Because he just could not cope with that demand that has been on him for a number of years,” Molango claimed.
Whose loss is it? England’s? Yes. But isn’t it a loss for every football enthusiast across the globe that we will not see two of the finest contemporary footballers on the biggest stage of them all? For the record, Foden was adjudged the best player of the Premier League not too many seasons back.
Take the case of Virgil Van Djik, the Netherlands captain who has played 55 matches for Liverpool in the 2025-26 season across competitions. In terms of minutes played, it’s a staggering count of 4941. And in the entire season, he was subbed out just once. Add to that the 720 minutes he played for the Dutch in their qualifying campaign. One guesses Van Djik, an old warhorse, can take those minutes in his stride; but if he breaks down at the World Cup, will it be surprising?
As it is, a player is torn between the obligation to give his best for both, club and country. He can ignore neither — club football shapes his career, gives him wings of luxury, but the emotional high of performing for your country at a World Cup is perhaps a stronger drug.
The shrinking recovery windows have made it tougher for the top-level players. Despite advances in sports science, monitoring technologies and multidisciplinary support at club level, the fatigue factor hasn’t been eliminated. The main reason for that is the players simply don’t get enough time to recover during and between seasons.
For example, last year, none of the clubs that took part in the Club World Cup gave their players the recommended minimum of 28 days off between seasons. Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain, the two finalists in that competition, gave their players 20 and 22 days off, respectively.
And if the above factors don’t burn out the players, the heat will surely burn them. The World Cup is set to begin during one of the hottest times of year in North America, and several of the host cities may see high temperatures during the event.
It is anticipated that 14 of the 16 World Cup venues will exceed 28 degrees Celsius in Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT). The Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) is a measure of the heat stress in direct sunlight, which takes into account temperature, humidity, wind speed, sun angle and cloud cover (solar radiation).
So what can we expect from this World Cup? Stunning goals, artistry with the ball, dogged defence? Yes, but with that, maybe, hyperthermia and dehydration too.