Jürgen on the fixture congestion international players will have between next week and Easter, due to condensed World Cup Qualifying schedules and the normally jammed English fixture list:
"From next week now, the players play internationals. By the way, FIFA gave the South American teams the opportunity to play a third game. They can play the third game on Thursday night in Brazil and we can do nothing in the moment against that and we have our match on Sunday against Leeds. So, just to say the intensity is starting now. At the moment it’s like still an extended pre-season: you play a game then you have a week to prepare the next game, then you have a week to prepare the next game. After that game against Chelsea, the players play always three games a week until Easter. That’s the situation. So, that’s why we cannot make a spectacle of challenges and then on the other side say ‘they might be a little bit tired’. In all these things, the first thing we have to be concerned about is not the spectacle but is the player, that’s what I always said. For us it’s exactly the same, like it is for other teams… we will have a lot of football games but we only have them if our players are available. If they are available, then we have to make sure they don’t get hurt in situations we could avoid."
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