After Saturday’s 2-1 La Liga away win against Villarreal, Real Madrid head coach Carlo Ancelotti had a clear message for the world of football.
“Today is the last game we’ll play with less than 72 hours’ rest,” Ancelotti said. “We’ll never do it again. This is the last time.”
The game, at Villarreal’s Estadio de la Ceramica, kicked off at 6.30pm local time. Madrid’s Champions League round-of-16 victory against Atletico Madrid had ended at close to midnight on Wednesday after extra time and penalties.
When the final whistle blew on Saturday, several Madrid players, including Jude Bellingham and Aurelien Tchouameni, dropped to the ground in apparent exhaustion. Striker Kylian Mbappe, one of those who played the whole of both matches, was caught on Spanish broadcaster Movistar’s cameras saying “I’m dead” to Tchouameni as they left the pitch.
Tchouaméni, Fran García (now with the doctors), Camavinga and Bellingham on the pitch after the end of the match.
The team is exhausted. @TheAthleticFC pic.twitter.com/pW7TidVCnB
— Mario Cortegana (@MarioCortegana) March 15, 2025
Asked later in the same press conference to confirm if the team would show up for the next game scheduled without at least 72 hours’ rest for his players, Ancelotti responded: “No, of course not.”
Whether Madrid will actually go through with that threat remains to be seen, but the numbers do show that Ancelotti and his team have endured a particularly gruelling schedule in the first eight months of this season.
Madrid are the team in Europe’s top four leagues who have had three days’ rest or less between games on the joint-most occasions so far in 2024-25 (16, with fellow La Liga side Real Betis) — as the graphic below shows.
This is not a new issue either — multiple Madrid players and Ancelotti himself have often complained about fixture congestion in recent years.
Madrid are behind only Manchester United and ahead of teams including Barcelona, Fiorentina and West Ham for the most games with three days’ rest or less since the start of the 2022-23 season.
Winning the Champions League twice in the past four seasons and reaching the semi-finals in the other two is an obvious reason for Madrid’s packed schedule.
Ancelotti’s team have had a particularly busy schedule in the opening months of this year. From January 3 to March 15, Madrid played 22 games in 71 days across four different competitions — La Liga, the Supercopa de Espana, the Copa del Rey and the Champions League.
Success was again a factor as they reached the Supercopa final and have progressed to the Copa semi-finals. Two of their 22 games were avoidable — finishing outside the top eight in the Champions League’s new-look league phase led to a two-legged play-off against Manchester City in mid-February rather than advancing straight to the round of 16.
It has all meant that in less than three months, Madrid have played nine games with less than 72 hours’ rest between them — including this most recent turnaround between kick-offs of 69 and a half hours from Atletico in midweek to Villarreal on Saturday.
“This team has something special: character, commitment, so we can only thank them for their mammoth effort from January 3 until today,“ Ancelotti also said after their win at Villarreal.
Madrid have suffered a lot of injuries this season. A squad that is light in some areas, particularly in defence, also means their available players have had to take on extra workload to cover for the absentees.
The 72-hour period Ancelotti mentioned is recommended by worldwide players’ union FIFPro, whose research shows at least three days’ rest is required — kick-off to kick-off — to safeguard players’ health and help prevent injuries. On Saturday evening, the AFE, Spain’s players’ union, also released a statement saying 72 to 96 hours’ rest was “necessary to preserve players’ physical and mental health”.
Madrid players have often complained about a lack of proper rest in recent years — Mbappe, Tchouameni, Bellingham, Federico Valverde and Dani Carvajal are all quoted in FIFPro’s 2024 annual report on player performance, recovery and health.
With the calendar getting even more crowded, the message from players could not be any clearer – elite men’s football is #AtTheLimit pic.twitter.com/Osl42ObJrz
— FIFPRO (@FIFPRO) July 5, 2024
“Real Madrid is right to protect its players,” David Terrier, president of FIFPro Europe, tells The Athletic. “Elite-level players are increasingly at risk of mental and physical overload because FIFA (football’s world governing body) has repeatedly ignored our requests to introduce safeguards, such as a minimum of 72 hours’ rest between matches, maximum number of games, limited number of back-to-back matches, or protected season breaks (between one season ending and the start of the next one).
“The current situation works not only against players but also against football itself. The underlying issue is a failure to regulate the global football calendar in a meaningful way that protects player welfare, performance and a healthy balance between competitions.”
Kick-off times in La Liga games are spread out over a weekend to provide as much content as possible for its partner broadcasters, which then makes the league’s TV rights more valuable and provides more revenue to be shared among clubs.
La Liga has developed its own software programme called Calendar Selector for setting kick-offs, which uses artificial intelligence and incorporates 70 variables including historic TV audiences, predicted in-stadium attendances and likely weather conditions for each game.
Rest for players following matches in European competitions is also taken into account — all three Spanish clubs who played in Europe last Thursday were given slots on Sunday.
The weekend’s most attractive game for broadcasters was Atletico Madrid versus Barcelona, so it was given the headline 9pm Sunday slot. There was no Monday game this week with the year’s first international break starting, so Osasuna versus Getafe was also played on Sunday — at the same time as Rayo Vallecano vs Real Sociedad — even though none of those teams were involved in European competition in midweek.
This idea of spreading the games out as widely as possible was rejected by Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois on Real Madrid TV after Saturday’s win at Villarreal.
”I understand that La Liga doesn’t like to set the schedules so that the big three (Madrid, Atletico and Barcelona) play on the same day, but sometimes that’s what it takes,” Courtois said.
“It was a lack of respect towards our team and our players, because someone might have got injured today. The game could be put on Sunday, before Atletico-Barcelona. You could even talk about a Super Sunday, like we do in Belgium or in England. It’s also good for television, but other interests sometimes come into play and it’s not easy.”
Courtois said the scheduling of the Villarreal game showed a ‘lack of respect’ towards Madrid (Angel Martinez/Getty Images)
After the Villarreal game, Ancelotti said Madrid had specifically requested that the fixture be moved back 24 hours to give his players more rest. “We’ve asked La Liga twice to change the time of the game and nothing has happened,” he said.
The conversations Ancelotti was referring to took place between Madrid’s director of institutional relations Emilio Butragueno and La Liga’s competitions director Raul Ojeda.
La Liga sources — who, like all those cited in this article, declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak publicly — said they have previously adapted kick-off times of other games after conversations with Madrid, as also happens with other teams.
Madrid asked to move their game against Villarreal too late, according to La Liga protocols, with league sources pointing out the times were set for last weekend’s games on February 25, four days after UEFA had confirmed the kick-off times for the midweek European fixtures and six after Madrid had completed their play-off win over City.
La Liga president Javier Tebas entered into the debate on Saturday evening. He wrote on X that Butragueno has got the league to push back the start of Madrid’s next game against Leganes on Saturday, March 29, from a 4.15pm kick-off to 9pm to allow more time for their South American players to return from international duty and be available to Ancelotti.
Tebas pointed out this will mean less than 72 hours’ rest between the final whistle of the Leganes match and kick-off in Madrid’s following one, the second leg of their Copa del Rey semi-final against Real Sociedad on the Tuesday night.
Carlo, seguro que Emilio te habrá contado que LaLiga había puesto el partido con el Leganés, de la proxima jornada ,el sábado a las 16:15 para daros más descanso antes de la semifinal contra la Real Sociedad. Pero Emilio le pidió al director de competiciones de LaLiga cambiarlo… pic.twitter.com/PHNmPYxGgb
— Javier Tebas Medrano (@Tebasjavier) March 16, 2025
Tebas’ public intervention was no surprise, given the regular bitter public rows between La Liga and the Madrid hierarchy — including over the league’s current TV deal.
The 72-hour issue was also raised on Real Madrid’s in-house TV channel before they faced Villarreal, with RMTV staff claiming the La Liga president was personally to blame.
“Tebas is the one responsible for not putting the game tomorrow (Sunday) and not giving the players the rest that FIFA recommends,” host David Alvarez said during the broadcast, while pundit Miguel Angel Munoz told viewers that the AFE did nothing about the issue “due to their close connection with Tebas.”
La Liga sources deny Madrid are in any way unfairly targeted when the calendar gets set — and pointed to the impossibility of giving every team 72 hours’ rest between games across different competitions.
Barcelona have also been angered by the La Liga calendar this week. Their game against Osasuna — postponed on March 8 after the death of Barca’s first-team doctor Carles Minarro Garcia only hours before it was meant to kick off — has now been rescheduled for Thursday, March 27.
That date is, in theory, available for domestic fixtures but Barca players Raphinha and Ronald Araujo have World Cup qualifiers for Brazil and Uruguay respectively in South America on Tuesday, March 25 (with the former ending at a time that’s in the early hours of the Wednesday in Europe), and the Catalan club intend to appeal.
Madrid club president Florentino Perez is also a key promoter of a European Super League which he says would solve many of football’s current problems (and which Barcelona still support).
Sources familiar with the breakaway project, which has been rebranded as the Unify League, told The Athletic “the calendar is one of football’s big challenges”, that “fewer games, but more high-quality games, would be better” and that “we believe players, who are currently outside, need to have a voice in this.”
Perez is a key promoter of the European Super League (Grzegorz Wajda/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
But these sources also accept they would also use three midweek slots as the current UEFA competitions do — and then would not have the power to influence how domestic leagues organise their weekend schedules.
Madrid were also not the only La Liga team to play last weekend without having three days’ rest following their European fixtures. Clubs playing in the less high-profile Europa League and Conference League on Thursdays are often given less time to prepare than their Champions League counterparts.
After his team had come from two goals down to win 3-2 against Leganes in a Sunday 2pm kick-off — just 65 hours after beating Vitoria Guimaraes of Portugal 4-0 in the Conference League’s round of 16 for a 6-2 aggregate victory — Betis coach Manuel Pellegrini was asked about Ancelotti’s comments the previous evening.
“I believe it’s not for us coaches to decide when we play and when we don’t,” said Pellegrini, who managed Madrid in the 2009-10 season. “There are directors, a football federation, executives, who are in charge of these rules. We’ve played with less than 72 hours’ rest eight or nine times, but we did not complain.”
Athletic Club beat Roma 3-1 at home in the Europa League on Thursday in a 6.45pm kick-off then played Sevilla in La Liga at 4.15pm on Sunday, winning 1-0 — there were 69 and a half hours between the games’ start times, the same as Madrid for Atletico and Villarreal. This was the sixth time this season the Bilbao side have returned to domestic action after less than 72 hours’ rest.
“We’d not have shown up for quite a few games,” their head coach Ernesto Valverde said, when asked about Ancelotti’s threat. “When we play on Thursday, it often determines the starting XI (the following weekend). And we’ve even played on Sunday at 2pm (after a Thursday game).
“It often happens to us, like La Real and Betis. You’re only asking me about it now because it’s reverberating as Madrid have talked about it.”
Real Sociedad kicked off away to Manchester United in the Europa League at 9pm Spanish time on Thursday, then also had 69 and a half hours before playing at Rayo Vallecano on Sunday with a 6.30pm start. That was the sixth time this season they have had less than three full days between European and domestic games.
Their coach Imanol Alguacil, asked about the issue after his team drew 2-2 at Rayo on Sunday, said that Ancelotti had spoken in a “moment of anger”, which he understood as it was “produced by this run of games which both we and Madrid have suffered”.
“But (Madrid) are not wrong, as it’s very hard to compete like this,” Alguacil continued. “If Madrid are complaining, imagine what it means for La Real to play 19 games every three days at the very maximum level. We’ve got here with seven or eight players out, and others on the bench who could not help.
“I don’t know if it’s the most sensible to talk about it now, when we already know the calendar we have. Whoever decides should decide in the best way so this does not happen, as it’s crazy.”
(Top photo: Diego Souto/Getty Images)
