World Cup Hangover: World Cup fatigue may be impacting the Premier League already

Just 35 days after Spain beat Argentina to lift the 2026 World Cup, the 2026-27 Premier League season is underway. So far on matchday 1, we have already seen some evidence that the summer's congested football schedule may favour certain teams.

Yesterday, two out of the three promoted teams won their first games back in the top flight. Hull defeated Manchester United 2-0 in the early kick-off, while Jack Clarke's last-minute winner helped Ipswich beat Sunderland 2-1.

The excitement and momentum of the first home game back was certainly one factor in those two wins. However, fatigue and readiness for the season may have also played a part.

From Hull's starting lineup, only Elliot Stroud went to the 2026 World Cup, and he didn't even play a minute for Sweden. Compared to this, eight of the players involved for Man United yesterday were at the tournament including five of the squad who started.

"We were late for the start of the Premier League"

Tottenham had a disappointing start to the season, losing 3-0 at Brentford. After the game, manager Roberto De Zerbi said that Spurs were "late for the start of the Premier League". Clearly the World Cup was a factor in this. Part of Tottenham's issues were the seven players out injured for the game. Three of them - Sarr, van de Ven and Porro all went to the World Cup.

Conversely, Brentford looked much more prepared for the match and the lack of World Cup minutes left them much more ready for the start of the season. Players registered just eight total appearances at the tournament, and most of these were defender Kristoffer Ajer who played five times for Norway. Only two of their starting eleven were at the World Cup, and their fitness throughout the 90 minutes seemed to reflect this.

Arsenal were the only team to buck the trend. They strolled to a 3-0 victory at home to a newly-promoted Coventry side, starting with six World Cup players, whilst Coventry started with just three.

Summer fatigue has taken its toll on Premier League teams before

Intense summer schedules have recently had an impact on player fitness. In the summer of 2023, the inaugural Premier League Summer Series took place in the United States. Six Premier League teams - Aston Villa, Brentford, Brighton, Chelsea, Fulham and Newcastle met to play three intense friendlies each in hot conditions. By the end of the season, out of the five Premier League teams with the most days lost to injury throughout the campaign, four had participated at the tournament. It is possible to say that players playing games at an intense level without a proper summer break led to fatigue issues that plagued participating clubs throughout the season.

The starting lineups don't tell the whole story

We can look beyond the starting lineups to see the effect the World Cup has had.

Arsenal were without William Saliba on Friday, as he suffered an injury in France's semi-final loss to Spain. Aston Villa will be without Amadou Onana who suffered a long-term injury in Belgium's round-of-16 game against USA.

Beyond this, the World Cup may have pushed transfer business later in the summer than usual. Crystal Palace were without World Cup appearer Ismaila Sarr in their loss to Everton, who reportedly is looking to leave alongside Jean-Philippe Mateta. It is likely that these sagas would have been resolved earlier without the distraction of the summer tournament.

Will this continue to affect the 2026-27 season?

It is too early to judge the impact of the tournament on the Premier League season. Based on what we have seen so far, newly-promoted clubs who didn't have such big World Cup cohorts will look to pick up more early Premier League points before other clubs are fully ready to compete this season.

The Ultimate Premier League Quiz

Adam Hurrey of the Football Cliches podcast called Peripheral's Ultimate Premier League Quiz "superb". The idea is to name 180 players, a combination who has been on the books for each pair of all 20 Premier League clubs e.g someone who has played for Arsenal & Villa, someone who has played for Arsenal & Bournemouth and so on.

See how well you can do here.