# In soccer friendlies, do players give it their all?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772
**Category:** The Game Room
**Tags:** football-soccer-fifa
**Created:** [July 12, 2025, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772 "2025-07-12T13:54:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2025, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/1 "2025-07-12T13:54:55Z")
Aston Villa are crossing The Pond and playing a few international friendlies against MLS teams, to include one against my club, St. Louis City SC. For Aston Villa, the stakes are low, as preseason friendlies are just warm ups for the upcoming season, which starts in August. For City, the stakes are nonexistent, as this match takes place during, but apart from, the regular MLS season and has no consequences, win or lose. OK, so maybe, in some oblique way, it could demonstrate that MLS play is getting better compared to European leagues, but probably not.
Can I expect to watch two bench squads play half-assed (as to avoid risking injury) football, or do the players and teams give it their all in these situations?
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### Author:  [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2025, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/2 "2025-07-12T13:59:14Z")
Bench players playing half-assed.
Years ago I say Manchester United vs Bayern Munich in Chicago and ManU didn’t play a single starter. Bayern did in the second half, but it was clearly a practice / pre-season tune up for both teams. I thought that the teams would care about the quality on the field for branding reasons, but that was a distant second or third in priorities.
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### Author:  [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2025, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/3 "2025-07-12T15:28:48Z")
> [@HeyHomie](#):
>
> Can I expect to watch two bench squads play half-assed (as to avoid risking injury) football,
Yeah this is pretty much a fact of footballing life that friendly matches are pretty half arsed. Its a saying when a match is low energy and no one seems to be trying that hard, “this match seems like a friendly”
That said they are elite professional sportsmen, even if this is not the game of their lives, they are still going to play football very well indeed.
And while the main stars won’t give a crap (and more importantly _really_ don’t want to get injured), players further down the pecking order who don’t normally get a start will be motivated to impress and cement their place when the season starts.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2025, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/4 "2025-07-12T15:41:53Z")
Do they get any monetary incentives for winning?
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### Author:  [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2025, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/5 "2025-07-12T15:59:09Z")
I don’t think so? But even if they do, for the top players who are on 100s of thousands of dollars _a week_ a win bonus is not going to be much incentive unless it’s silly money
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### Author:  [@ricepad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ricepad)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2025, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/6 "2025-07-12T16:48:08Z")
I don’t think any player is giving it their all in a friendly, but you’ll see more effort from two distinct groups: youth/fringe players looking to impress their manager in the hopes of getting more playing time when playing time really matters, and players nearing the end of a contract who may feel they’re in the shop window, looking for a new team to sign them in an upcoming transfer window, if even only on a loan basis.
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### Author:  [@Jaycat.again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaycat.again)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2025, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/7 "2025-07-12T16:54:20Z")
So, analogous to a baseball spring training game, perhaps?
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### Author:  [@ricepad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ricepad)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2025, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/8 "2025-07-12T16:58:06Z")
Yeah, pretty much. The only effort from veterans whose jobs are safe might be in trying new stuff, so in baseball, maybe a new pitch. In soccer/football, it could be a new turn or other ball skill.
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### Author:  [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2025, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/9 "2025-07-12T17:19:37Z")
99.5% of friendlies are boring opportunities to either watch new players or see disinterested older players (pretty much like the spring training analogy above). That said, 0.5% of the time something happens - someone gets pissed, or there’s already backstory and tension between the teams, and a real game breaks out…US v Mexico is a good example.
But in general…very quiet indeed.
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### Author:  [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2025, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/10 "2025-07-12T17:36:33Z")
I think international friendlies are a different matter and are interesting a much larger percentage of the time than club friendlies.
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### Author:  [@iamatractorboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamatractorboy)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2025, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/11 "2025-07-14T12:04:32Z")
Even if a player is giving it their all, I’d say there’s a psychological aspect to this too whereby you’re not going to be quite at the same level as during a competitive game. In the same way I imagine an Olympic level runner is not going to break world records in training. But you could also argue when the pressure is off that some may actually perform better?
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### Author:  [@Dahu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dahu)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2025, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/12 "2025-07-14T12:37:20Z")
I can’t remember when I heard this, but Celtic were playing a friendly once and a journalist asked the manager if they’d be taking it easy. His reply:
“Celtic dinnae play friendlies.”
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2025, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/13 "2025-07-14T13:28:00Z")
Come to think of it, a lot of sports have a championship tournament of some sort, where only a fraction of the teams qualify, and it’s common for some of the lower-performing teams to be mathematically eliminated from the tournament with a few games yet to go (that is, even if the low-performing team wins all of their remaining games, and the team they’re trying to edge out loses all of their remaining games, they still won’t make it). Do those games see the same sort of lack of effort, at least by the mathematically-eliminated team?
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### Author:  [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2025, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/14 "2025-07-14T13:33:50Z")
If your tournament has a bit of thought put on it you’ll have relegation (so you can’t lose too many matches or you’ll be in a lower league next year) and the top three or four teams classifying to international tournaments, so basically no one is without a reason to win.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2025, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/15 "2025-07-14T13:43:00Z")
I’m not familiar enough with relegation to make a value judgement as to whether it’s good or bad, but I do know that it’s not a thing in any major American professional sports (and I suspect not in any American professional sports at all, because the minor sports don’t even have multiple levels of leagues).
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### Author:  [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2025, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/16 "2025-07-14T13:52:48Z")
I think you’re more likely to see the lack of effort / reserve players from teams that have already qualified for the post season; an injury to one of their players has more consequence.
While American leagues don’t have pro/rel (although I believe the United Soccer League just instituted id) there are often draft order considerations that are still relevant at the end of the season. Although those would often mean the teams want to lose.
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### Author:  [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2025, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/17 "2025-07-14T13:52:58Z")
IMHO relegation is good for the sport but not so good for the business.
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### Author:  [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2025, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/18 "2025-07-14T13:55:46Z")
One great think about European leagues (and other leagues?) is that qualification for various competitions (Champions’ League, etc) and relegation can make more than half the teams still be in play for something at the end of the campaign. Now, that “something” can be good or bad, but at least it’s something.
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### Author:  [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2025, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/19 "2025-07-14T14:01:22Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Do those games see the same sort of lack of effort, at least by the mathematically-eliminated team?
So actually the opposite can be true. Its pretty common for a team to see an uptick in form once they officially relegated (as in mathetically they will still finish in the bottom three even if they win all their remaining games and everyone around them loses). As at that point the pressure is off them and they are just playing for pride. This is what happened in last seasons premier league (with the added motivation that Southampton were attempting to avoid being the worst ever team in the premier league, which they just managed, ending with the second lowest points total in premier league history)
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### Author:  [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2025, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-soccer-friendlies-do-players-give-it-their-all/1020772/20 "2025-07-14T14:06:08Z")
The whole European complaint that American soccer is substandard because we don’t have pro/rel has been done to death on these boards and elsewhere. American soccer is substandard for many reasons, not just the lack of pro/rel. But we simply _cannot_ have pro/rel. We have a second and third division of professional-ish soccer (seriously, do the players in our second and third tier leagues even get paid, or do they have day jobs like 6th-and-below tiers in England?), but instituting pro/rel would effectively require tens of millions of dollars changing hands, mountains of paperwork, and an entire dismantling of MLS’ structure. To say nothing of the fact that, in Europe, cities of 70k, 80k, 90k, and such (like [Wrexham](https://www.wrexhamafc.co.uk/), which has a population similar to that of [Joplin](https://joplinsports.org/)) can support professional soccer teams. Joplin can’t support a professional soccer team. Even if Joplin had a strong soccer culture, like, I dunno, a city of a similar size with a large immigrant population, it still couldn’t support a professional soccer team. Hell, baseball is king in Joplin, and Joplin couldn’t even support a AAA\* baseball team if they had one. Everyone is inside watching _Yellowstone_.
As I’ve said before, the US is about century behind Europe when it comes to soccer culture. Give us another hundred years, and IF baseball continues its slow death and IF gridiron football also experiences the same fate, then maybe, MAYBE, we’ll have a strong-enough football culture that we can have pro/rel.
\*For those who don’t know, AAA is the lowest division of professional baseball in the US, and the organizational/ownership structure of baseball teams forbids pro/rel within baseball.
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