The calendar gets sold before anybody schedules it

Congestion is not an accident of tradition; each additional match exists because somebody sold the slot before anyone scheduled it.

Expansion happens in reverse order. First a competition is enlarged, then broadcast and sponsorship inventory is sold against the new matches, then the calendar is asked to absorb them, and only afterwards does anyone ask the people playing.

Every governing body sits on the same structural problem. Its revenue comes almost entirely from a small number of events it controls, and its costs and obligations grow every year: development programmes, member associations, prize money, staff. There is one reliable way to increase income without renegotiating anything, and that is to create more inventory. More teams, more group games, a new format, an expanded qualifying phase. Each new match is a sellable slot.

Meanwhile domestic leagues face the same arithmetic from the other direction and defend their own windows fiercely, because their rights deals are priced on exclusivity within them. The result is not a conspiracy against players; it is two commercial systems both growing into a fixed number of weeks, with the athlete as the shared resource neither party pays for using.

Player associations have started threatening legal action on workload grounds, which is the first mechanism with any teeth, because it attacks the calendar as an employment matter rather than a sporting one. Governing bodies negotiate hard against this for an obvious reason: any binding limit on matches per player converts an unlimited resource into a metered one, and metered resources have prices.

That is exactly what should happen. Set a hard annual cap on competitive appearances, allocate it, and let competitions bid for the right to schedule against it. Suddenly a meaningless expanded group stage has to justify itself against a domestic cup tie in economic terms, and some of the filler disappears on its own.

Clubs would hate the administrative burden. Broadcasters would hate the loss of certainty. Anyone arguing for the current arrangement should have to explain why the only input in this industry that cannot be manufactured is also the only one issued free.

Fixture congestion is not a scheduling failure. It is a scheduling success, for everybody except the people running.