Watching England and Spain yesterday, I recognized several players on each team that I’ve seen playing for other teams recently. How is this managed? What if a player is being paid by two clubs and they each have a game scheduled at the same time?
I was saddened Harry Kane wasn’t able to pull off a miraculous win.
The national teams aren’t clubs. Players can play for their national teams independent of their professional clubs.
Are you saying that there are players under contract to multiple professional teams at the same time?
Yeah the national team is unrelated to the domestic clubs that the players of play for most of the time. Its expected that players in for the big nations will ply their trade at one of the big European clubs (though not always in their own country). Though unusually actually both finalists were made of players largely not from the big clubs (lots of Villa and QPR players for England, very few Real or Barca players for Spain)
Players can play for whatever domestic team that will have them (Ronaldo famously now plays for a Saudi Arabian team) and can change club at will, contracts (and transfer windows) permitting. Teams will loan out players though,.so you officially still work for team A but you are temporarily playing at team B (and having team B pay your salary.
You can’t change international team, however many countries you qualify to play for (by being born in or having a parent/grandparent from) once you have played for the adult team that’s your team and you can’t switch.
Okay, I get it. I’ve seen Harry Kane playing for Bayern Munich, and didn’t realize that the England national team wasn’t similar. Also saw players for Spain who also play for Real Madrid.
So, playing for England he did not receive a paycheck? Wouldn’t Bayern Munich prefer he not risk injury playing for England? Could they specify in his contract that he not play for any other team?
Cool.
It should also be added that the international tournaments are scheduled in the summer when almost all the big domestic leagues (all the big European leagues) are not playing. The MLS is one of the few that does play during the summer, I’ve no idea why they scheduled it that way. Did they just assume that no international players will play there?
He does receive a paycheck. I doubt it compares to the checks Bayern pay him.
Yes, Bayern would probably prefer he not play. However, FIFA has ways to encourage that clubs do not bar players from playing for their national team.
As a counter-example, the Olympic Committees do not have that same leverage and many clubs have refused to let players join their Olympic teams this summer (rightly so, IMO - there are already far too many matches for players to add yet another offseason tournament).
ETA: I see now that many players donate their national-team pay to charity. I don’t know how universal that is.
I don’t know if that would actually be against the FIFA regulations, probably? It would certainly be very very controversial and make them very unpopular.
The big international tournaments are considered the Pinnacle of the sport and you don’t hear much push back against them from domestic teams (except the African Cup of Nations which because the heat is played in the winter, also racism 
)
What you do hear complaints about is the less high profile qualifiers and friendlies that happen during the season. You’ll often have big players suddenly have an “injury” during the international break so they can’t play in that friendly, only to magically recover before the next club match.
Thanks all, this all makes more sense now.
Maybe I’m nieve but I would like to think it isn’t racism.
During the season there are designated international breaks, typically there will be no club games for one weekend and no midweek games the week before or after, national teams will play up to two games in this window, usualy qualifers. Players are not expected to miss club games due to international duty. Most of the push back on these is due to distance, having a player travel to Africa where flights are relatively short and there is little jet lag is rarely a problem, having a player go to Austrailia or Argentina for an international against weak opposition might result in a player being “injured”.
The African Nations , and Asian cups are not in these windows, or at best an international break only covers a small part of the tournament therefore a player going to one of these tournaments ant getting to the final (or semisas there is a 3rd place lay-off in the African nations) could miss for or 5 club games. Having a star player or two miss those games could result in critical lost points that end up costing a team the league title or putting them into relegation.
IMO there is definitely an element of racism, even if the practicalities of the winter schedule are the main reason. There is an acceptance that for European or South American players playing for their country is the pinnacle of world sport and is an unavoidable part of having the best players in the world on your domestic team. That same acceptance is not given to African players
I remember when my kids were little, telling them about how horrible the situation was wrt racism when I was their age. I told them how everything was so much better, and it was now their job to continue making things even better.
That was close to 30 years ago. I was naive. Now I’m a pessimist.
Not quite sure where you got QPR from there, perhaps a typo! Maybe you meant Palace?
But as mentioned, international tournaments in Europe and South America are scheduled around the European club game, AFCON isn’t. It’s also true however that the clubs know they are buying a player who may be missing a month of the season so they can hardly complain.
Yup indeed
Better for viewership?
And that a large number of MLS cities literally could not play during the winter unless they were indoors - too cold and too much snow. Europe is much milder in the winter than a lot of the US is.
Also competing against the NFL would be suicide for MLS.
Yes, exactly. Norway, Sweden, and Finland all play Spring to Fall schedules too
The real question is why the Europeans play fall-to-spring, thus missing the most pleasant months of the year for outdoor activities.
I would argue that spring and fall are better than summer, and for a lot of Europe, winter would be more pleasant to play in than summer. Barcelona, for example, has average highs in January of 56. That’s basically perfect playing temperature. Probably the summer would be more pleasant to watch in though.
Big national team tournaments are in the summer. Not sure the history of league schedules and if the World Cup was scheduled to fit in the break, the break for the tournaments, or neither.
There is also competition with other sports.
Many of the early clubs played cricket in the summer and football in the winter. For example wiki says this about the early history of the team I support, Everton.
“In 1877 Rev. Ben Swift Chambers was appointed Minister of St. Domingo Chapel. He created a cricket team for the youngsters in the area but, as cricket was only played in summer, there was room for another sport during winter. Thus a football club called St. Domingo’s F.C. was formed in 1878”
While football dominates attention in most countries these days it is was played in the summer it would have to compete with cricket, athletics, tennis, etc and many of those sports are unsuitable to be played in the winter.