Those fretting about fixture congestion can count their blessings they were not in Steve McClaren’s Middlesbrough team that reached a UEFA Cup final.
Boro played 64 games in that 2005-06 season, while also reaching the FA Cup semi-final and Carling Cup quarter-final — taking in plenty of replays along the way.
During one crazy phase they played 22 matches in 68 days, peaking with four in nine days in April. They had two league games on Saturday and Monday, a UEFA Cup semi-final trip to Romania on Thursday and an FA Cup semi-final against West Ham at Villa Park less than 72 hours after that.
Burton boss Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink has conceded players could hit a ‘brick wall’ this season
There have been concerns over player welfare amid a fixture list pile-up caused by Covid
Time was so tight the players didn’t even return to Teesside after their 1-0 first-leg defeat by Steaua Bucharest, flying direct to Birmingham to prepare for the West Ham game, which they also lost 1-0.
Their striker Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink recalls the crazy schedule with both pride and pain. ‘It was a lot of games,’ he says. ‘I was 34 and it’s not an age that goes together with so many matches of high intensity.
‘We didn’t have time to train, it was to maintain. We didn’t have the biggest squad so it was a case of resting between games and making sure we were tactically okay.
Hasselbaink reflected on a season with Middlesbrough in 2005-06 where they played 64 times
‘But footballers find the intensity and hunger from somewhere. If you are a top professional and want to play at the highest level, those big games are what you want.
‘There does come a time, however, when you will hit a brick wall. It is for the manager to judge where that brick wall is. Now we have a problem with Covid and if games are postponed, how are you going to fit them in, and where? If we keep on going like this, we will have to play four games in a week eventually and that will be a disaster.’
Boro, captained by future England boss Gareth Southgate, had great experience to deal with their epic schedule and McClaren handled it all shrewdly enough to be given the national team job at the end of the season.
He feared continued Covid delays could be a ‘disaster for English football’, but said a hectic schedule made English football special
Hasselbaink is now facing fixture chaos on the other side as manager of League One Burton Albion. Though a proud Dutchman, he has spent nearly all the last 20 years in England and does not want the pandemic to alter the hectic football culture over here.
‘Who is doing the complaining?’ he says. ‘Mostly overseas managers who have winter breaks in their countries and only one cup.
‘But this is the identity of English football. It’s how it has been, what makes it special.
‘Should you be able to work with a bigger squad? Maybe. Should you have five substitutions? Maybe. But let’s not change the English culture and let’s keep the games as they are. That is the beauty of it.’