Chelsea hoping to survive international football’s jump the shark moment

Chelsea will be hoping the international break is kind as UEFA pushes ahead with their dumbest jump the shark moment at the worst possible time.

When a TV show (or anything really) is failing, they have a “jump the shark” moment to try to bring viewers back. Basically, it is something so ridiculous that people just have to join in and it either works, changing the way things are done, or it fails spectacularly and everyone laughs at how terrible of an idea it was.

That is where international football is right now. Mind, international football has always been silly and unwelcomed, but this season it is downright foolish. First there was the preseason interrupting break. Now there is the catch up on fixtures delayed break. Some teams will be playing not their customary two matches, but three. Oh, and that is not to even mention this thing called Covid-19 which makes international travel and football just an awful idea.

Obviously this is going to hit Chelsea hard in a few ways. The first is the simple fixture pile up. The Blues have already played six matches this season, with another seven before the next international break. Add in the two preseason international fixtures and now the three this break and that potentially 18 matches for a player in roughly a two month time span. Obviously a player won’t play in all 18 of those matches, but key players are probably still hitting 12 or more.

This is especially true with the hairbrained idea of Nations League. The initial notion for this was to make friendlies more exciting and “matter”. The effect of it has been that there is no such thing as a friendly to rotate for anymore because every match matters. That might benefit someone like Mason Mount on the periphery of England, but it will shove someone like N’Golo Kante into the ground.

Look at England’s schedule this break. Wales, Belgium, and Denmark. Look at what Kai Havertz, Timo Werner, and Antonio Rudiger have to face. Turkey, Ukraine, and Switzerland. And France? Ukraine, Portugal, and Croatia. Oh, and it is worth mentioning that the first listed for all of those is a true friendly because apparently everyone around the world thought that a third match would be a genius idea in the most constricted season of all time.

That is not to even mention Covid. Yes, players are put into a bubble but everyone has already seen how well that works for England. Two players last break broke the bubble and only got sent away because they got caught. Three players this break (including Chelsea’s own Ben Chilwell and Tammy Abraham) have been delayed because they broke protocol. France had positive cases last time and do once more.

Let’s expand on that using Liverpool as an example. Liverpool is currently having an outbreak, though it isn’t really being discussed heavily. How many of their players are going away to international duty this break? How safe should any team feel, bubbles and testing or not, with a Liverpool player potentially spreading the virus around the national team squad? And then that player has to return to their club and potentially do the same.

Perhaps one of the most egregious things as far as it goes for Chelsea right now? The fact that Brazil is playing matches in Brazil. Brazil has one of the highest counts of Covid daily and FIFA seems totally okay with players from Europe, like Thiago Silva, traveling into and later out of that. The player may be in bubbles and tested but England has shown how reliant that is on every single individual doing their part which seems hard for some reason.

In perhaps the strangest twist of all, only the United States Soccer Federation has figured any of this out. They are not playing any matches this break and even for next break, there are plans to only used European based players if there are matches in Europe and only America based players if the matches are in the Americas. It is still not ideal, but it at least implies some consideration that the world isn’t the same as it was this time last year.

This is a jump the shark moment in two ways. The first is if few players get injured over the break, it is highly likely that three matches in one two week break becomes the norm worldwide. The second is if teams somehow avoid Covid outbreaks, it will bolster UEFA and FIFA for pushing ahead with international football and probably fans back in stadiums just before a potential second wave of the virus.

This is a whole lot of words to say international football is dumb and it is hoping that making dumb decisions works out in the end. Chelsea will simply be hoping their players come back without injury or, more importantly, without Covid. Given how things are going in 2020, they shouldn’t hold their breath.