Pep Guardiola Is Right: Football Is Killing Itself with Packed Schedule

Pep Guardiola resorted to hyperbole Monday, complaining in a press conference that there are too many football games for athletes at the highest level.

"We're killing the players. We're asking too much of them. The players need time to rest," the Bayern Munich head coach said. "This is true not only for Bayern, but for Dortmund and Bayer Leverkusen. It is impossible to play every three days and keep the same players."

Guardiola's claim came just two days after he resorted to playing a B team in a scoreless draw with Hamburg, perhaps a necessity after Bayern had won a hard-fought Champions League fixture with Manchester City in midweek before.

The claim may have been rather extreme, but it's not too far off the mark. There's too much football being played these days, and it's destroying the bodies of even elite athletes.

Hassan Ammar/Associated Press

A look at the injury lists of Germany's Champions League participants tells all. Bayern's Javi Martinez will miss the majority of the season with a knee injury. Thiago Alcantara hasn't played since March. Franck Ribery has played just 23 minutes in all competitions this season; Arjen Robben just 195. Bastian Schweinsteiger has been absent since the World Cup. And after returning from a crippling pair of knee injuries, Holger Badstuber is set to miss the rest of the fall campaign.

The situation at Dortmund is no better. Mats Hummels is yet to play in 2014-15; Marcel Schmelzer has featured for just 123 minutes; Sven Bender 214. For the second time in three months, Marco Reus has torn ankle ligaments. Henrikh Mkhitaryan was recently diagnosed with a similar injury. Jakub Blaszczykowski, Oliver Kirch and Ji Dong-Won have all sustained muscular injuries, while Nuri Sahin is sidelined with a knee operation. Ilkay Gundogan's situation is improving, but he hasn't played in 13 months, and his return date is still uncertain.

At Schalke, Fabian Giefer, Felipe Santana, Leon Goretzka and Marcel Sobottka all have muscular strains and tears. Jefferson Farfan and Sead Kolasinac are long-term casualties with knee injuries. And Benedikt Howedes is currently out with a partial tendon tear.

Leverkusen have been more fortunate, perhaps due to their having fewer World Cup participants than Bayern, Dortmund and Schalke, but their injury list consists of Omer Toprak, Simon Rolfes, Kyriakos Papadopoulos and Julian Brandt.

The 2014-15 season had a delayed start following the World Cup, but Europe's domestic leagues are still on track to end the season as usual in May, adding midweek fixtures to a schedule that already includes regular Champions League and Europa League, as well as domestic cup fixtures.

For some among more successful club and international sides, it could mean a run of nearly 24 months without more than a few weeks' break.

So many games can make for extra revenue, but they are also destroying the product that football governing bodies UEFA and FIFA are made to optimize.

Consider the 2010 World Cup, during which Wesley Sneijder, Diego Forlan and Arjen Robben were among the biggest stars.

Burak Kara/Getty Images

All three had reached the final or third-place match in South Africa and were pushed to the physical limit. All were expected to return to club football just weeks later and came back shadows of the players they had been just a month before.

Robben was found to have a five-centimeter tear in his hamstring when he returned to training and was unable to return to action until January 2011; Forlan's goals tally decreased from 28 in 2009-10 to 10 the next season, comfortably his lowest record since leaving Manchester United in the summer of 2005.

Sneijder went from being arguably the world's most decisive player to physically impotent in just months; he actually collapsed from anemia at half-time of a Serie A match in November 2010, saying "my whole body is exhausted," per the Daily Mail.

In light of his club's woeful run of bad luck from the treatment table, Bayern CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge issued a statement in the club's stadium magazine (h/t Abendzeitung Munchen, reported in German) in which he called upon FIFA and UEFA to limit the number of international fixtures.

That is one option that could help ease the burden from players.

Of course, domestic leagues could also modify their schedules. Extra competitions like the Club World Cup, or domestic or UEFA Supercups could be eliminated. In England, perhaps one or two among the FA Cup, Capital One Cup or Community Shield could be dropped.

There are options if football's governing bodies are willing to make a stand to protect the product they sell.

As it stands, however, just over two months after the 2014 World Cup final, history is repeating itself as football is imploding.

The World Cup is certainly a catalyst, but even without a summer tournament, repeated injuries to overused athletes like Reus and Thiago are evidence that footballers need more time to recover between matches and a longer offseason in any case.

The result is a lower quality of football, with tired players going through the motions or in some cases spending months on the sidelines. And in rare instances, careers are destroyed.

Guardiola's statement may be convenient at this time, but he's right: There is too much football being played. The more big stars we see fall out injured or play off their best form, the clearer it is that less is more. So much football is destroying the game.

Follow Clark Whitney on Twitter