#193 Why do winter breaks exist, and how many leagues observe them?
Soccer 101
TSS
4.9 • 853 Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2024
⏱️ 24 minutes
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Summary
Graham and Taylor aren't on a break... but are instead discussing breaks. What is a winter break in soccer? Which leagues currently take winter breaks? What do teams actually do during the winter break? What are the benefits and drawbacks of a winter break?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome everybody to Soccer 101. My name is Taylor Rockwell, and this week we are not taking a break because it's time to talk about breaks. |
| 0:22.1 | That makes sense. Specifically winter breaks, Graham Ruthven. I am sorry that you don't get time off from recording the Total Soccer show. Maybe after the festive period in which we get a bunch of different one-on-one episodes crammed together. Maybe you'll get in like a week or so off. I mean, we're surely due a break. |
| 0:18.3 | I feel like we've been in one big season since 2020. |
| 0:21.7 | There's surely one coming, Sid. Says you and most other footballers out there. And no, says most leagues out there. But, Graham, there are some leagues that do have a spearhead. Do give that break. So that's what we're going to talk about today. |
| 0:54.9 | Winter breaks, who has them, who doesn't, why they exist, what the benefits might be, how they're |
| 0:59.8 | treated, all that good stuff. So let's start with the basics then. What is a winter break in |
| 1:04.9 | soccer? Yeah, so it's pretty self-explanatory. It's in the name of there, right? But it's a break in the |
| 1:10.1 | middle of the season that a lot of leagues take. And this is different to what MLS does with its off-season. And also |
| 1:18.1 | a lot of northern European countries as well have a similar schedule that goes from like, |
| 1:21.8 | what, February to December time. And they obviously take their off-season over the winter. |
| 1:26.0 | That's not what we're talking about here. |
| 1:27.6 | We're talking about breaks that happen smack-bang in the middle of the season. |
| 1:31.5 | And I really struggle to find a true origin of the concept of a winter break. |
| 1:38.3 | Google and I even tried, what's the Microsoft Copilot? |
| 1:43.4 | I think that's like AI or something. |
| 1:44.9 | I put it into AI and struggled a little bit. |
| 1:49.4 | But I did find a story about something that happened in the 1962, |
| 1:53.0 | 1963 season in England called The Big Freeze. |
| 1:56.6 | And basically there were two months that season |
| 1:58.9 | where the weather was so bad, the pitches were so frozen, there was so much snow, that no football was played over those two months. |
| 2:05.5 | And whether by coincidence or not, that seems to be around the same time that they introduced the winter break in Germany. |
| 2:12.6 | Funnily enough, England emerged from the big freeze and thought, nah, winter break's not for us, but it seems |
... |
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