Players playing for big clubs, like FC Barcelona, face a very strenuous annual schedule these days. The number of matches that these players play has been increasing gradually over the last few years, pushing the top players to their limits with their bodies.
There are several Barcelona players who have accumulated a high amount of minutes this season, playing almost all the games with the clubs and their national teams.
According to Mundo Deportivo, it is a Barcelona player, Ilkay Gundogan, who has played the highest number of matches in 2023.
The German midfielder has played 58 matches this year, which have been spread over his appearances with the German national team, with Manchester City in the first half of the year, and with Barcelona since June.
This number is going to increase even further, as the German can still play five more La Liga matches, a couple of matches in the Champions League, and also the friendly in the USA, which has been scheduled for 21st December.
Gundogan shares the highest number of games played with Erling Haaland, and both of these players have played three more games than Gavi. Other big names like Vinicius Junior (57), Harry Kane (53), Antoine Griezmann (51), Kylian Mbappe (48), and Lionel Messi (43) have all played fewer games than Gundogan and Haaland this year.
The Barcelona midfielder has been playing at a frantic pace this year. Till May, he played an average of 6 games per month, and this average dropped only in March when it reached three games. He played a total of 31 games in the first half of the year.
After the summer break and the pre-season, his number of appearances again shot up, and thus has accumulated 58 games by this time, and there is still one month and one week to go before the year ends.
