[Westheim]

No, the calendar is actually ridiculous. The players on the best teams in Europe play two games every week for pretty much ten months out of every year, and everybody's ever happy to cram some more games into the schedule.

Over the last decade we got two additional "group phase" games in the Champions League, and the entirely useless Nations League baloney that adds from four to eight games in a two-year cycle for national team players. And then there was that extra Round of 16 game added to the European Championship. The Euros and the World Cup take away the summer rest period every other year, too, at least for the best players in the world.

An English national team player on a top-tier Premier League team (say, Liverpool) will play in up to

38 Prem games
6 FA Cup games
6 League Cup games
8-15 Champions League games (already involving places most American middle schoolers won't find on a globe, like Cyprus)
some useless Supercup game, probably
very likely at least one or two pointless friendlies for big dosh in Arabia
6-8 Euro/World Cup qualifier games ("Nations League" or otherwise), not including useless friendlies on ECQ/WCQ play dates where his country actually doesn't have a game scheduled
3-7 Euro/World Cup games (every other year)

This could be up to EIGHTY games in a year. And it doesn't include pre-season friendlies against Upper Hoppington Borough from ninth league for conditioning / charity / general clownery.

The FA actually at least tried to do something and eliminated FA Cup replays a couple years back - prior to that, ties were replayed at the away team's place a week later, regularly wrecking the schedule down the line. In the olden days (pre-1990s), replays were even unlimited, because people actually had time back then.

La Liga is only making everything worse. I guess you have to somehow generate revenue when your two shiniest horses are either a BILLION dollars in debt or regularly threatened with the banhammer for "creative tax filings".