As matches pile up, Robert Lewandowski questions soccer calendar

At 35 years old, FC Barcelona and Polish National Team forward Robert Lewandowski recently logged more than 4,700 minutes for the year. One of soccer's most accomplished players has played more than 66,000 minutes in 811 matches over his career, but he believes it's becoming too much. The soccer calendar is unrelenting and Lewandowski recently voiced his concern that it's an issue.

"This season is going to be more tough than before because we have more games in the Champions League ... there are the games with the club but also the national team, so we travel a lot," Lewandowski told ESPN .

"That will be a huge challenge for every club and every player, because the expectations are always very high, and you play every two days, and people expect you play every game at the highest level.

"It's almost impossible to stay on top of your game, every game, because you don't have time for resting well, you don't have time to be outside of football in your mind ... We are human, we are not machines.

"Probably in the end, the quality of the games of football will a little bit be going down because of the intensity of the games."

The new Champions League format debuts this season and increases the total number of games from 125 to 189. Four more teams will also be included and the group stage has increased by two match days.

In the 2023-24 season, Lewandowski appeared in a total of 61 matches. December and January alone contained 14 matches with only one break longer than four days. In those matches, Barcelona faced all four of the other top five clubs in La Liga, played an away Champions League match, won the Supercopa de Espana and played two knockout matches in the Copa del Rey, making eight of the 14 matches elevated intensity.

Lewandowski played at least 70 minutes in 11 of the matches. To Lewandowski's point about the quality of games going down, his two worst months of average match rating were November and January, according to Who Scored . In 2024-25 he can expect to play even more soccer in that stretch.

The allure of money will ensure clubs keep playing more matches, but the potential for injuries to star players increases with each added contest. Especially around the holidays, so many high-profile matches are played, and to be without a star player could mean an early exit from a cup or a stumble on the table.

To be fair, Lewandowski and the rest of European soccer haven't yet experienced the new schedule. Managers will be counted on to find rest for players and "load management," a term familiar in America thanks to the NBA, may become a thing in European soccer.

Lewandowski's work rate at the age of 35 is impressive compared to his peers in other sports and it is proof that soccer players are asked to do more than most pro athletes. Lewandowski played more than 4,700 minutes this season. DeMar DeRozan of the Chicago Bulls, the NBA's minutes player leader, played less than 3,000. Alexandar Georgiev of the Colorado Avalanche led the NHL in minutes, but he still came up more than 1,000 shy of Lewandowski.

Perhaps it's apples to oranges, but it illustrates Lewandowski's point that soccer players were already working at an incredible rate and will now be asked to do more. Maintaining form will have never been such a tall order.