A foretaste of Qatar 2022: decreased playing time of internationals after the Africa Cup of Nations

TL;DR

This study analyzes how the scheduling of AFCON impacts the playing time of international players, revealing a significant decrease in games and minutes played after the tournament, which may affect club seasons.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on the decrease in playing time of international players post-AFCON, highlighting potential impacts on club seasons and scheduling considerations.

Findings

Significant decrease of 3.3% in games played after AFCON

Players with consistent club history showed a 6.8% decrease in games

Releasing clubs might experience reduced player participation later in the season

Abstract

Due to the unfavourable climatic conditions in Qatar during summertime, the FIFA World Cup 2022 will be played during on-going seasons of the major European leagues. This study investigates how national teams' tournaments scheduled at such a time window impact the playing time of released players, using data from the Africa Cups of Nations (AFCON). For 262 internationals playing at the 2013, 2015 and 2021 AFCON, we compared the share of possible games and minutes played before and after the tournament using Mann-Whitney-U tests. We found a significant decrease of 3.3% for games (p=.029, CL_Effect_Size=44.5%) and 3.1% for minutes played respectively (p=.018, CL_Effect_Size=44.9%). For a subsample of 163 players, which played for the same club the preceding seasons, we found that these players tend to have played more in the second half of the previous season, resulting in a net decrease of 6.8% for games (p=.011, CL_Effect_Size=42.3%) and 7.1% for minutes played (p=.007, CL_Effect_Size=41.9%). Conclusions for the FIFA World Cup 2022 should only be drawn carefully as the number of released players was comparatively low. However, the findings give some indication that releasing clubs might suffer the rest of the season after this tournament.