Premier League clubs involved in August mini-tournaments for the Champions League and Europa League will ask to start next season later than the rest of the division.
Manchester City, Chelsea, Manchester United and Wolves are still involved in Uefa club competition, although Chelsea will have to overturn a 3-0 first-leg home defeat by Bayern Munich to reach the Champions League last eight.
Fifpro is asking for at least three weeks of complete rest between the 19-20 and 20-21 season.
“Research has shown increased injury rates concurrent with less than six days of rest between matches,” Fifpro said.
It added in a statement: “A large percentage of elite-level footballers were already stretched by the match calendar even before the Covid-19 pandemic, with a lack of recovery time between games and insufficient mental and physical rest between seasons. Now, since the restart we are seeing a first spike in injuries because of insufficient preparation time and congested match schedules. Discussions on match calendar reforms so far have disregarded the responsibility to balance the needs of competition organisers with those of players. Leaving players’ workload management to individual decisions will lead to conflicts with their release for national team games, undue pressure on them to go beyond what is healthy and, ultimately, a decrease in the quality of competitions.”