A World Cup year means a short break for many players. Some want the Chelsea boys to come in early, but they have earned and deserve their rests.
Fans demand a great deal from players, often much more than they should. If a player does not meet the arbitrary standards some fans set, then the player needs to leave or deserves some sort of punishment.
That is an issue that has been popping up over the weekend in regards to World Cup players. Players who were at the World Cup are entitled to exactly three weeks of vacation from whatever day their tournament ended. With preseason being so short, and so many players still being gone, there is a belief that players should return earlier for the good of the club. If they do not, some will say, then they do not deserve to wear the shirt.
Gary Cahill, for instance, is seen as not being a captain because he is taking his vacation. Ruben Loftus-Cheek is once again called “lazy” for sitting out. In a vital preseason to their futures, they are seen as not having the desire to force their way into the squad.
The common go to is that both should have taken an early return because of how little they played in the World Cup. Players such as Eden Hazard, N’Golo Kante, and even Thibaut Courtois (who literally just has to stand there) are being given passes for playing.
What this argument fails to even consider is training. A player that is not playing still trains just as much as everyone else. That puts a great deal of fatigue on the body.
Furthermore, the World Cup is such a marathon because players are at the bottom of their fitness levels. They just finished a long, 10 month season followed by another month and a half of training and the World Cup. Those three weeks would literally be the only rest they would have in a calendar year.
Even a little amount of rest can go a long way. Athletics at the level of the Premier League is a fine balance that can easily be upset by returning to training too early. That is why the club hires the best professionals who determined that three weeks was enough rest time for the players.
And, going back to the captain notion, the argument grows even sillier. Cahill does not deserve to be captain because he took his vacation? Okay, who did not take a vacation this summer? Anyone? Because if that is the criteria, the bottom of the barrel is the new captain.
That is not to say players cannot return early if they want to. That is, of course, their decision and probably a bad one. But whether they take the vacation or not should not be held against them. The players need to rest or else they will injury themselves and miss out on far more than three weeks.
Fans need to understand just how much goes into being a Premier League level athlete. It is not just showing up, but an intensely detailed a calculated regimen. Players need to do what their physios are telling them, not what the fans think makes them “deserving” of the shirt.