Anyone who listens to talkSPORT will have heard this debate time and time again. Martin Keown bangs on about players being overworked, Simon Jordan asks him if they would take a play cut to pay less games and there is complete radio silence, and therein lies the problem. Players earn ludicrous money these days, and that money has to come from somewhere. Taking a current example, Bryan Mbuemo is rumoured to be going to Man Utd for £250,000 a week. Don't get me wrong, he is a very good footballer, but that is a ridiculous wage, around £13 million a year. Only around 20% of Man Utd's revenue comes from match days, the rest all comes from commercial and broadcasting incomes, so you can see why the clubs have to explore all possible avenues to get money in. I know that Man U aren't in the club world cup, but they have gone on overseas post / pre-season trips even though their players claim to be exhausted.
I'm eligible to work a 4 day week, but if I do that my salary would be reduced by 20%, which is just basic common sense and economics. But footballers don't seem to grasp that, and therefore the people that make money out of footballers such as agents will continue to pursue more and more money.
I don't know whether it will be in 5 years or 20 years, but I'm sure that at some point there will be seismic event that will destroy the money in football. A bit like a bigger version of when ITV Digital went under and in doing so took football clubs with them.