You may find this difficult to believe these days but once upon a time international football was a treat, a bonus.
You had your club football pretty much every weekend from August through to May.
Then international football fitted around and complemented that.
What a bizarre concept!
There would be international football matches after the club season ended but other than that, England the other national sides would only play odd matches during the league season. These would be played in midweek, so players would turn out for their clubs on a Saturday before heading off for midweek duty with their countries (England and the rest), usually playing international matches on a Wednesday and then back to play for their clubs once again the following Saturday.
Looking back for example in 1977, apart from some matches in the summer after the club season had ended, the only ones during the season were five midweek ones – a friendly in February 1977, a world cup group qualifier in March 1977, a friendly in September 1977, then another two world cup group qualifiers with one each in October 1977 and November 1977.
In the calendar year of 1994, England only played four internationals during the league schedule, outside of the summer break.
In 1995 there were six England internationals played outside the summer break but all of them in separate months.
As the 1990s progressed, international football began to lose the plot and become a negative for the clubs and especially the fans.
Fast forward to the present day and Newcastle United fans are having to wait 23 days between Premier League matches.
We have had to get used to four lots of fortnight breaks during the league season to accommodate international football, usually September, October, November and March all seeing Premier League football stop for two weeks at a time and England and the rest playing two games in each of the four international breaks. This is on top of the games played each summer by national sides.
This season a little different as for who knows what reason(s), the September and October fortnight breaks have been combined into one that lasts three weeks, for NUFC it is 23 days. With England and most other national teams playing four games each. The Premier League season had lasted four weeks before then an international break for three weeks. How did we ever come to this?
I have looked at the England schedule of matches in 2026 and between 27 March and 15 November, Thomas Tuchel and his players have 18 internationals.
If you thought that was bad, I looked at DR Congo, Yoane Wissa’s national side. Between early September 2025 and early October 2026, a period of only around 13 months, they will have played 23 internationals. Get this though, if during that time they had progressed to the finals of both AFCON and the World Cup then that number would have risen to 30 internationals in 13 months!