Paris Saint-Germain manager Thomas Tuchel has gone on the record stating his displeasure with the number of matches footballers play and he kind of has a point.
“I really think we are playing too much with 20 teams in the champion, 2 cups, the Champions League, a lot of tournaments for the national teams,” Tuchel said at his pre-match press conference ahead of the match against Amiens SC as reported by Le Parisien.
“They want to create a Club World Championship. It’s a lot…”
With that in mind, Tuchel proposed a solution to the issue that has plagued his squad this season with a number of muscle injuries that you could attribute to the overuse of players.
“There should be more possibilities for changes in the games, to better manage,” Tuchel said. “It is too much for the players to be in the best intensity and the best state of mind.”
“We can stay with 3 changes, but with the possibility of changing two players each time, which would make a maximum of six replacements. “The idea would not be to allow a team to interrupt the match six times, but to group the changes, as detailed by the PSG coach: “I could make two changes first, then two others, and one last, which would make 5 replacements in this example. It would protect key players and align players that everyone wants to see at the stadium.”
Before you think a radical idea like this will never be implemented in a major tournament, keep in mind that five substitutions (three stoppages in play total) per team are permitted in the UEFA Youth League and UEFA European Under-19 Championship.
If the goal is to put the best product on the field to entertain those in the stadium and watching on television, a rule like this would make sense. Instead of players being gassed towards the end of the 90 minutes, a manager could bring on additional substitutions to inject a game with a bit of pace and it could lead to more goals.
Let me put it this way, would six substitutions ruin the game more than VAR has?
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