Why burnout is England's biggest opponent at Euro 2024 - ESPN

Is it possible for a country to have the most physically demanding league in world football and still see its national team win an international tournament? England are about to find out at Euro 2024 as, once again, the Three Lions attempt to prove that the Premier League isn't its biggest roadblock to achieving success.

Despite a status as a major football nation and an abundance of world-class players, England have failed to win a major tournament since the 1966 World Cup. But, ahead of their Euro 24 opener against Serbia in Gelsenkirchen on Sunday, they are considered one of the favourites to win it.

So after another season of two domestic cup competitions, a winter break so brief that most teams barely noticed it, and European football for the Premier League's top clubs, do Gareth Southgate's players have any chance of overcoming England's age-old problem of fatigue?

Former UEFA president Michel Platini, one of the greatest players of his generation who captained France to glory at Euro 1984, famously said that England were «lions in the autumn, but lambs in the spring.» And that was before football even began to consider the effects of so-called «burnout.»

Sports science has now become so advanced that the fitness of footballers is monitored and assessed whenever they walk through the doors of the training ground. But a heavy workload is a heavy workload and England start Euro 2024 with only Roberto Martinez's Portugal collectively having amassed more minutes in all competitions during the 2023-24 season.

Portugal's players have clocked up 92,322 minutes from 1,216 games played this season. The 90,169 minutes that Southgate's squad have run up come from 1,140 games, but nine of Portugal's squad compete outside