With the closest title race in years in its final phase we now have an undesired and untimely interruption next weekend for international games. This breaks the league’s rhythm, it is frustrating for fans and clubs are bound to complain if any of their players get injured. Whether the blame for this situation lies with FIFA, UEFA or the Spanish Football Federation I cannot say, but the powers that be should put a bit more effort into avoiding cases such as this.

One obvious solution would be to reduce the number of qualifying games for World Cups and European Championships. This could be done either by having more groups with fewer teams in each group in the qualifying stages or alternatively making the weaker national teams play preliminary games to reduce the number of teams playing in the final qualification groups. These preliminary games could be played in the same weeks as the European Championship or World Cup Finals when Albania or San Marino’s finest are normally sunning themselves on some Mediterranean beach.