Mikel Arteta warns football's fixture congestion could lead to increase in mental health issues for players ahead of expansions to both the Champions League Club World Cup

Mikel Arteta is worried about the mental health of his players and warned the ever-expanding football calendar is putting more stars at risk of psychological exhaustion.

Last month Premier League chief executive Richard Masters declared that football is at a ‘tipping point’ with players being asked to play more games than ever before.

While the physical demands on players has escalated, Arteta is increasingly concerned that while team medical personnel can identify psychical ills, psychological exhaustion proposes to be much trickier to manage.

‘We forget that we are only counting acute injuries, muscle injuries, that keep a player out of for three weeks, six weeks, etc – that’s very easy to diagnose with an MRI scan,’ Arteta, speaking at the Globe Soccer Forum in Sardinia, said.

‘The problem we’re going to have is that one day that player is going to say: “I’m not fit to play because mentally I’m not in the right condition”. You cannot put that player into an MRI scan; so the doctor is going to have to decide whether that player is available to play the next week or in three months.

‘When we have a few of those cases then what happens, because this game belongs to the players?

‘This can happen one day and that’s my biggest worry. It is not just an injury of two weeks, but a much bigger problem that we can face in the future if we continue this way.’

Managers, players and club executives are concerned about the number of games being played in the next few years, with a revised and expanded UEFA Champions League, as well as a newer version of the Club World Cup to factor in next season.

The Champions League is expanding to 36 teams with a league format replacing the traditional group stage, meaning teams will play two extra matches.

Meanwhile the Club World Cup, which is a 32-team tournament in the United States that will run from June 15 to July 13 2025, will take away some clubs’ chance of recuperating in the off-season and preparing for the new Premier League campaign.

Man City are one of the English teams that will be involved in the Club World Cup next year and CEO of the City Football Group, Ferran Soriano, insisted that priorities need to be recalibrated to better serve players.

Soriano described the calendar congestion as a ‘crisis’ and pointed to the number of young players finding themselves overworked compared to heroes of the past.

It was pointed out that Kylian Mbappe, for example, has played 37 per cent more minutes than Thierry Henry at the same age. His soon-to-be Real Madrid team-mate Vinicius Jr has played 12,000 more minutes than Ronaldinho at the same age.

‘Like everything in life, it’s priorities,’ Soriano said. 'We have to decide what’s most important, starting with the health of the players.

‘We have got into a spiral where everyone is defending each business and we can’t go on like this.

‘We need to care about the players first but also and I say this because this is important, then the fans. What do the fans want to see? They are the engine of this business.

‘Do they want to see an improved Champions League or the Club World Cup or a Nations League? We need a system that serves our fans without killing our players and we are far from that now.’