"They can be angry about other teams wanting a Super League but they don't care about the players, they just care about their pockets," said former Chelsea keeper Thibaut Courtois after Belgium was beaten 2-1 by Italy in the Nations League third-place play-off.
The Belgium goalkeeper accused football authorities of prioritising revenue over player welfare in a damning assessment of the global football calendar. Courtois,29, was speaking after his country lost 2-1 against European champions Italy in UEFA's Nations League third-place play - a match he described as "pointless" in the build-up. With such a tight international schedule sandwiched in between important club fixtures for all the players involved with these countries in the latter stages of the Nations League, the Belgian didn't see the point of having to play what he viewed as a meaningless game.
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"This game is just a money game and we have to be honest about it. We played this game because for UEFA it's extra money and it's an extra game on TV and for us, okay it's a good game because it's against Italy but once coaches say no to wanting to play this game, of course we are made to play," he lamented.
"Look at how much both teams changed [line ups] and how many other players played from our side, so if both teams would have been in the final- other players would have played. This just shows that we play too many games- in June again, four Nations League games, why? Next year, we have a World Cup in November and we have to play till the latter stages of June again and we will get injured and nobody cares about the players anymore. In June, after a long season, you have to play four games again in the Nations League and you will only have two weeks of holiday. That isn't enough for players to be able to continue to perform on the highest level and if we never are going to say anything then it's always going to be the same, " he went on.
"Then they propose the Super League which is just extra games, adding an extra trophy in the Conference Cup or whatever the name is- it's always the same. They can be angry about other teams wanting the Super League but they don't care about the players, they just care about their pockets. That's a bad thing if players are not spoken about and then you hear that they want to put in a European Championship and World Cup every year, like when will we get a rest- never. So, in the end, only top players will continually get injured and then that's the end of it, so it should be much better than this for us. We are robots and more and more games for us means that nobody cares about us."
Courtois also criticised FIFA's proposals to stage the World Cup finals every two years instead of every four. Under the plans, devised by FIFA's head of global development Arsene Wenger, major tournaments would be staged every summer and there would be fewer qualifying games. Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said something similar in September when the idea of a World Cup every two years was mentioned.
"If there's a World Cup every two years that means, 100%, that there'll be a European Championship every two years which means top players will have a tournament every summer and maybe a three-week break," Klopp said.
Among the many wrinkles in Fifa’s proposal to make World Cups biennial is that it would probably kill off the Nations League in its infancy.
The thinking goes that if World Cups were to be increased in frequency to every even-numbered year, then the major confederational tournaments – the European Championship, Copa America, Africa Cup of Nations and so on – would take place in odd-numbered years. Once you factor in the necessary qualifying process, which would be condensed in dedicated international windows once or twice a year, there would be no room for the Nations League.