Vote to exclude best teams from League Cup shows calendar needs urgent attention | Suzanne Wrack
A crowded international calendar is undermining domestic leagues and WSL Football has been left to figure it out
When the League Cup quarter-finals are played on Sunday it will probably be the last time they look this way. . West Ham v Manchester City, Liverpool v Chelsea, Manchester United v Tottenham and Crystal Palace v Arsenal means the top four in the Women’s Super League are involved. With clubs having voted to remove teams competing in the Champions League from next season, major changes are afoot.
The future format of the League Cup is still to be finalised and is subject to Football Association signoff but this forms part of plans for a revamp of an underloved competition that has an identity crisis. The changes include ditching the confusing group stage with its uneven number of teams, weird point scoring and odd geographical groupings. It is understood proposals have been put together in consultation with a competition working group that included clubs and was reviewed by representatives from fan associations through the Football Supporters’ Association.
Instead, a Swiss-style league format will be used, with the top eight going into the knockout stage. At present, the two or three teams in the Champions League group stage enter at the quarter-finals, potentially winning the tournament having played three games.
There is logic to excluding Champions League clubs. The international match calendar is strangling players. Those at the top – the minority, but the audience drivers – are playing more than ever. According to Fifpro’s recently released Precarious Workload report, last season the top 15 players in its sample played 50 games or more in a season for the first time since it began collecting data in this area in 2020. The three-time Ballon d’Or winner Aitana BonmatĂ, who recently sustained a leg fracture ruling her out for at least five months, topped the list with 60 appearances.
There is a difficult balance to be struck. In the WSL, one of the most developed leagues in the world, 43% of players made fewer than 20 appearances and 72% played fewer than 30 matches, with only 11% playing 40 or more matches.
WSL Football, the body responsible for the WSL and WSL2, has very little wriggle room though. It does not have enough weekends in the calendar to play with, despite data suggesting that across the top women’s leagues international windows account for six weekends. It has a square peg and Fifa has, in the form of the international match calendar, provided a round hole to try to fit it in.
The problem is complex. The NWSL, WSL, Liga F, Frauen-Bundesliga and Première Ligue use weekends differently but domestic club matches account for about three-quarters of the games played by the footballers from those divisions.
When WSL Football confirmed that England’s top flight would expand from 12 to 14 teams from the 2026-27 season, something many viewed as long overdue, it also announced changes to licence criteria minimum standards and guidelines around player loading, which included a minimum six-week break after a major tournament before the season kicks off, a two-week winter break, a maximum of two consecutive weeks with midweek games across any competition for any club and no midweek games after international breaks.
For this player care approach, though, it is in effect being punished, with not enough available matchdays.
It is understood that when expanding the top tier was explored, the option of moving to 16 teams was looked at but ruled out in part owing to a lack of space in the calendar.
The expansion to 14 teams means an extra four matchdays need to be found, but the calendar is getting more restrictive owing to the introduction of the Champions Cup, which kicks off this season in late January, the expansion of the Champions League proper from 16 to 18 teams, the World Cup growing to 48 teams by 2031 and a Club World Cup on the horizon from 2028.
Fifa is reducing the number of international windows from six to five in the 2026-29 calendar, but the arrival of the Champions Cup, which is essentially a Fifa window, counterbalances that (albeit with fewer players involved). It will be played annually other than in Women’s Club World Cup years.
The women’s Champions League semi-finals are also played on weekends, unlike in the men’s tournament, and WSL matches are not played on FA Cup weekends in the way they are in the men’s game.
The Guardian understands Fifa does not view international football as a barrier to domestic growth but as one of its strongest drivers and best opportunities to grow the women’s game and that 1,041 clubs benefited from the £8.4m distributed to clubs through the Fifa Club Benefits Programme for players competing in the 2023 World Cup.
Additionally, it is understood Fifa believes the solution to loading issues lies not in having fewer games but in smarter distribution of minutes and deeper squads, alongside raised minimum standards and sustainable financial foundations.
The obvious benefit to losing Champions League sides from the League Cup is it removes at least one game from the most overloaded players and rewards players in teams with underloading problems (those who do not have enough games), giving them greater prospects in a competition won only by Arsenal, Manchester City and Chelsea in its 14-year history.
It is clear the current League Cup format does not work and a revamp is needed. Something also needs to be done about a calendar that is stifling the development of the WSL, one of only two profitable women’s leagues in the world (with the NWSL in the US). We shouldn’t be adverse to, or instantly critical of, change or trying and failing. The chaotic draw for the League Cup quarter-finals, done live on TikTok by the influencer GK Barry and her girlfriend, the footballer Ella Rutherford, was an experiment gone wrong, but that is OK.
Removing the Champions League teams from the League Cup has downsides though. First, teams in England realistically lose the significant opportunity of securing a domestic treble. Chelsea managed it last season, as did Barcelona, and it would put England out of step with the other key women’s leagues in Europe.
Then, there is the impact on the League Cup itself. People want to see the top teams and top players and the change will affect broadcast interest, audience scope and sponsorship opportunities. There is also the risk it becomes a procession for the team that finishes fourth or for a club that failed to make it through the Champions League qualifiers.
The best solution would be an international calendar that doesn’t undermine domestic leagues and competitions by prioritising the expansion of international football and international club football before the base is solid enough.
In the absence of that, radical and not altogether perfect changes may be necessary.