Leeds United trio face ‘ominous threat’ at World Cup as fresh concerns emerge

Leeds United’s World Cup trio face an ‘ominous threat’ at the World Cup, according to player representatives FIFPRO.

The Premier League has now entered a break spanning just over a month to make room for the World Cup in Qatar. It’s the first time the World Cup has been held at this point in the season, with Qatar not able to host a summer edition due to its weather conditions.

The timing is tricky for players, who have been forced to play an extreme number of games in a short period over the last couple of years, with the covid pandemic forcing leagues to play catch up. And this season, those in European action have had to play twice per week almost every week for the last six or seven weeks, with the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League group stage fixtures having to be completed almost a month earlier than usual.

Leeds players haven’t had that problem, but the Whites’ World Cup representatives, Tyler Adams, Brendan Aaronson and Rasmus Kristensen still face playing a large number of games in a short period of time. The trio have been in regular Premier League action of late, and they must now play three group stage games in the space of just over a week, plus potentially knockout stage fixtures before returning to the domestic season, which restarts as soon as Boxing Day.

And that kind of workload has led to a report from FIFPRO, stating the dangers facing players as they jet off to represent their countries.

The report has found players, on average, have just seven days to prepare for the World Cup, compared to 31 days in previous editions. Recovery time is down from 37 days to just eight More than 70% of players played back-to-back games spanning the first 23 days of October, leading to claims players could be being asked to go beyond their limits.

The report claims the scheduling impact has had a significant impact on the amount of players who will now miss the World Cup due to injury.

The good news for Leeds is that USA players are in the bottom half for minutes played across club and international games, totalling 107,106 minutes, meanwhile Denmark are five place below them at 96,133 minutes, so Kristensen should be in decent shape, especially when you factor in the fact Leeds haven’t been playing mid-week football regularly this season, and they did have a month off due to the Queen’s death.

Portugal (135,237) and Brazil (135,078) have the players who have played the most minutes, while England are in sixth place with 127,120.