Are international friendlies really required?

You don’t need to look too far to see why international friendlies are a problem for the players and clubs in football. Just look at Borussia Dortmund.

Losing the last two of their center-halves right before a crucial game against Bayern Munich which could very well be a deciding factor in the title race. And what for? A friendly match? Add to that, the fact that the national coach rested a couple of Bayern players knowing this friendly to be preceding the all important Bayern-Dortmund match has kicked up huge controversy as to whether the national coach Joachim Loew is biased towards the Bayern team and thinks less of Dortmund.

With all these controversies and the pointlessness that seems to have been attached with the friendlies its easy to call for scrapping of the friendlies. But lets take a look at the flip side of this matter. What could be the advantages of the friendlies. They are after all sectioned as non-competitive games. So why waste players energy and time and risk the health of players who are going week in week out for the clubs and suddenly have to play 4 games in the span of 8 days and add to that all the travelling. Now that the case has been built up against the friendlies, lets try and take a look at them from a different perspective. One that is easy to ignore.

With the World Cup around the corner there is no other way to decide who gets into the team and who doesn’t. Lets take a scenario to better explain this whole thing. Spain make it into the World Cup finals after unconvincingly winning the group stages of the qualification. In that period they use their established midfield of Xavi and Andres Iniesta to dominate the games. But because they had to work hard to get the qualification they didn’t get the scope to experiment with the team. Because of this established pair, they do not select a player like Cesc Fabregas to play in the midfield. And then after the end of the qualifications Barca lose both Iniesta and Xavi to long term injuries and Spain has a crisis.

While there are suitable replacements in the form of Santi Cazorla, Fabregas and Juan Mata, they haven’t yet featured for the team so far in the past few months during qualification. How does a total makeover of the midfield suddenly take place when the next match you are supposed to play is right in the World Cup?

World Cup is important to football. Lets not dismiss that notion. So are the tournaments like the European Cup and similar competitions. These can not be taken lightly. Hopes of nations rest on teams and for most players it is very important to perform at their best during these tournaments. Players like Pele and Maradona are considered the best because of their performances for their countries. They would be great without those performances, but its those performances for country that sets them apart from the other great players.

People say that the friendlies are waste of time because they lack the competitive edge, which in some cases might be true but in most cases they are not. Because the games are friendlies, they have players who are hopeful of making it into the national team and they give it their best. You see players like Diego Costa and Adam Lallana giving it their best because they have been presented with a chance to make a case for inclusion into the World Cup.

Then comes the matter of reaching out to smaller nations. Football like every other game ( except probably the American sports riding on their high horses) wants to expand as much as possible. What friendlies do is provide opportunities to the nations new to football to play against teams that have established players who are worshiped by fans all over the world. Its  a good exposure for the upcoming teams of the various nations locking horns against the best in business and a chance to to show the world what they can do. Also this works in favour of the big teams as they can experiment with their sides. While in games such as the recent England vs Germany, the games hardly lack any competitive edge. And the fact that the substitutions are not capped also help further with the experimentation.

Case can be made against the timings of the friendlies, which is not an unfair point. In the past couple of weeks players playing for national teams and in the UEFA Champions League have played 5 games in 12 days which is likely to result in injuries and unnecessary tiring. This isn’t the fault of the friendlies. They are the problems with scheduling and that needs to be set right.

Friendlies are very important to International football and international football is an integral part of the sport that we love. So to maintain the levels of international football friendlies are essential. And the fans must respect that. Better scheduling can set the whole thing right. And thats is what is the need of the hour. If nothing is done in this regard we will very soon have players dropping out because of exhaustion. Thats something we have been seeing in cricket and we really do not want to see that in football.