The Effect of a Congested Season on the Match Activity of Professional Football Players

The effect of fixture congestion in football has been researched extensively over the years. There have only been studies over congested fixture periods, none have investigated a whole fixture congested season. This is primarily due to there not being a pandemic that has affected the football season before as it did the 2020/21 season. To our knowledge there has not been a study to investigate the effect of COVID-19 and the subsequent fixture congestion that was caused the following season after that. Thus, the purpose of this study is to ascertain whether there has been an effect on the activity of professional football players due to the 2020/21 congested season. The study included 65 players from a team in the English Football League One over three seasons that met a specific involvement criterion. This study used a data analysis method to look at three different periods of this season and compare those same periods with a counterpart from previous seasons, using the metrics provided by the Global Positioning System (GPS) data. The metrics to be looked at include high speed distance (HSD) and total distance (TD). As a whole season across all three periods there was no significant differences for TD or HSD between 2020/21 and 2019/20 season (P = 0.88 and P = 0.28, respectively). However, mean TD and HSD from 2020/21 (24784 ± 10111; 2055 ± 905, respectively) were only slightly higher than those of 2019/20 (24280 ± 11860; 1885 ± 890, respectively) in both instances. In conclusion, this current study has shown that there was no effect for TD and HSD, this is in line with previous research, but more research is needed on the topic.