Georgia Stanway has warned of potential “burnout” for players as she prepares for a summer away from major tournament football for the first time since 2016.
The England midfielder is an established member of Sarina Wiegman’s side, playing a crucial role at both the European Championship and Women’s World Cup, and is widely regarded as one of European football’s finest players.
Stanway also took part in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 with Team GB, adding to five years of playing in major international tournaments for England at Under-17, Under-19 and Under-20 level, and is still just 25 years of age.
The Bayern Munich star is currently in Marbella with England, at a warm-weather training camp ahead of friendlies against Austria and Italy, and she admits that “burnout” is a concern for the players, who would rather the decision-making is taken out of their hands.
“This will be my actual first summer that I’ll actually be able to have some time without youth tournaments with senior tournaments.” she said.
“It is a potential burnout. I think the thing that we want as players is that the decision is taken away from us. I think that’s something that we spoke about last year is just allowing the team above us to make the decision and then we can just go with it.
“We realised that it’s not quite as simple as that [having a summer off]. But the best thing you can do is work with country, work with clubs to find out the best solution and hopefully the best solution is giving us a good amount of time of rest.
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“It will be competitive football this summer,” she continued, despite Team GB not participating at the Paris Olympics because of England’s premature Nations League exit. “Obviously, we’ve got four games during the off-season but my focus will be on those games and maybe I need to learn when to be on and when to be off; maybe I just need to switch off faster or switch on faster.”
England manager Sarina Wiegman has previously spoken about the congested fixture calendar, revealing her concern over a lack of rest for her players because the majority of games are competitive and not friendlies. Indeed, FIFA scheduled windows in June and July – when Euro 2025 qualifiers will take place – mean players will not have entire off-season.
“This is exactly the case what we are addressing all the time,” the England boss chimed in. “There’s no tournament so that should be an opportunity to get some rest, but because of the window in June and the window in July how are you going to take some time off?
“Then after that, theirs is some time off, in England the WSL starts later, but then round one of the Champions League starts in early September, which takes away the summer from the players.
“That’s what we need to take care of and we’ve asked Fifa and Uefa to look at that and change that in the future so players can have some rest. It’s great that we have players that love football, but we have to take care of them too so we have to do something about the calendar.”
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