The 2026 FIFA World Cup is doing what every major international tournament does to Premier League clubs: borrowing their most expensive assets, running them into the ground, and returning them with a polite “thank you” note and, occasionally, a torn ACL.
The workload problem
Manchester City players logged somewhere between 5,027 and 5,319 minutes across the tournament, the highest total among all 20 Premier League clubs. Arsenal wasn’t far behind at 4,285 minutes. Every single Premier League team had at least one player in the tournament, meaning no club escaped the fatigue tax entirely.
The physical toll isn’t theoretical. Aston Villa’s Amadou Onana suffered an ACL tear during the tournament, the kind of injury that doesn’t just affect one match or one month. It reshapes a club’s entire season.
Here’s the thing about World Cup workloads. The clubs paying the wages have zero control over how their players are used. A manager in charge of a national team chasing glory has very little incentive to manage minutes for a player’s club season that starts weeks later. The incentive structures are fundamentally misaligned, and they have been for decades.
