EFL have a decision to make over international call-up postponements

The international break is here and if you are a fan of a League One club, consider yourself lucky if your team’s scheduled league fixture is going ahead this weekend.

What was once a period of light relief from the smothering presence of the Premier League and the dominance of the Championship for third and fourth-tier teams has become more of an interruption to the season than ever before.

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This weekend, with the top two leagues on a break, just two League One games are being played, with international call-ups halting the fledgling 2023-24 season. League Two has been spared any postponements this time around, as has the National League, but with the increased quality of players in all three divisions comes the question of whether the EFL should do more to capitalise on the break that comes with international fixtures.

It can be infuriating. The aggregator accounts on Twitter and Facebook dangle the hook loaded with the bait of “Only 12 days until league football returns!” — either wilfully or carelessly overlooking the 150,000-plus fans who watch League One and League Two in England each week. But those fans do not need telling that the leagues below the Premier League continue in spite of it, not as a result of top-flight fixtures happening (or not) on a given weekend.

The break was once the perfect chance to give both the EFL’s lower leagues a deserved moment in the spotlight, but the number of postponements puts League One, in particular, at a crossroads. Should it also go on hiatus along with the Championship? Or should clubs be forced to play on without their international players?

According to EFL rules, the threshold at which teams can request for a fixture to be postponed is when three or more players are called up for their national teams — in some cases, this includes players called up for their national teams’ under-21 sides if they have played a significant role that season. This means that, later in the season, there is a greater risk of League Two matches being postponed, too, as players will have built up minutes for their teams, as happened in the international break in March last year when matches were postponed between Newport County and Barrow and Bradford City and Crewe Alexandra.

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The same logic does not apply regarding postponements if, for example, a team suffers injury to three first-team players during the season. Postponing games during the international break can suit both clubs in a given fixture, but the disruption and contrast to the policy on players missing through injury presents a contradiction.

There could be scope for a higher threshold — for example, five international call-ups or more from one side resulting in postponement — to avoid punishing teams who know they will have to regularly release players to represent their national team. Over the course of the season, the breaks and busy periods of fixture congestion are likely to balance out, but the fractured approach of some teams playing and some not helps nobody when the financial implications of promotion or relegation are so great.

League One Sept '23 international break

It feels like an opportunity wasted for so many games in League One to be called off, and attendance figures from last season’s break during the World Cup are the perfect example of the health of lower-league football during that time. When the Premier League and Championship paused for the tournament hosted in Qatar in December last year, League One and League Two continued to amass just shy of 200,000 fans combined in each of the two gameweeks that took place.

The eyes of the world were naturally focused on Qatar, but there was a rise in attendance at matches in both leagues during the first week in which the Championship and Premier League were absent from the fixture list. In League One, a combined attendance of 100,200 from gameweek 18 in November rose to 111,180 in gameweek 19 in December and rose again in the following round of matches, with 129,508 fans watching.

In League Two, a combined 53,129 fans watched matches before the international break for the top two tiers. This rose to 75,021 combined in matchday 19 before falling to 54,152 in the following round of games. Figures are affected by teams with bigger capacities playing at home and will differ this season as clubs with sizeable fanbases such as Wrexham and Notts County still played in the National League at the time.

Attendances during 2022 World Cup

But the appetite from regular matchgoers remained, especially in the premium Saturday afternoon slot. Postponed games are often crammed in on midweek nights, when attendance is typically lower, as fixture congestion plays havoc. It also seems a punishment for supporters — and clubs seeking to attract new fans to a product that is proving increasingly popular for its differences to Premier League football — to be denied the chance to watch their team.

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There are perks to having a break, with a chance for players to rest and for managers to implement ideas on the training ground. The irregularity of the situation would be eradicated if League One came in line with the Championship and had an enforced postponement across all games, meaning clubs wouldn’t have to wait until national team squad announcements to learn whether or not they need to order enough food or have adequate staffing levels at their home game in a fortnight. It would also allow for a more measured scheduling of fixtures rather than some teams playing eight games in a month later in the season as they try to catch up, while others might only play four.

Forget the social media bots, football is alive and well during the international break thanks to the EFL. We just need to decide how much we value it having a rare moment in the spotlight — or acknowledge the need to level the playing field by cancelling games because our quality leagues are packed with international players.

Carrying on as things are does not seem fair or practical.

(Top photo: Jacques Feeney/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)

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