What Alessia Russo’s Season Reveals About Fixture Congestion

You may have seen my piece on Girlactico back in March looking at the response to Leah Williamson’s comments on the growing strain of the women’s football calendar, where much of the reaction felt fairly predictable, drifting towards comparisons with the men’s game and the idea that this is simply what elite football demands. A few weeks on, it’s hard not to return to that conversation, not because anything has eased, but because the reality of the schedule is becoming more visible and if anything, more intense – something that is perhaps most clearly illustrated by what’s happening at Arsenal Women. 

Photo Credit; ww.arsenal.com

From there, the broader point becomes easier to grasp when you look at an individual season and in that respect Alessia Russo offers a particularly clear example, given her role across both club and international football. Since the start of the 2025–26 campaign, she has made 29 appearances for Arsenal Women, accumulating over 2,300 minutes across a schedule that spans the Women's Super League, the UEFA Women's Champions League and domestic cup competitions, while also adding at least six appearances for the England women's national football team since the conclusion of EURO 2025. Taken together, those numbers point towards a minimum of 35 matches within a relatively short period, which when broken down leaves very little space between one fixture and the next.

Photograph Credit: John Walton/PA

What those numbers don’t quite show is how uneven the schedule can be. Matches aren’t just frequent, they move, with postponements, often due to weather or other logistical issues, then squeezing back into an already crowded calendar. A week that looks manageable on paper can quickly turn into something much more intense, and it’s that lack of rhythm, as much as the number of games itself, that makes recovery difficult to manage.

The contrast within the same squad only adds to that picture. While some players are caught in this near-constant cycle of matches, others have barely been able to feature at all and Leah Williamson herself has played only sparingly since EURO 2025 due to injury. The causes of injury are never simple, but it does highlight a wider pattern, where workload and availability start to feel like two sides of the same issue rather than separate concerns.

Photo Credit; Naomi Baker - The FA/The FA via Getty Image

All of this sits within a wider context in which the women’s game has expanded rapidly, introducing more competitions and greater exposure without always developing the supporting structures at the same pace. Squad depth remains uneven, the distribution of minutes is often concentrated among a core group of players and the calendar continues to grow in density, particularly for those involved in both domestic and international football.

A month on from Leah Williamson’s comments on fixture congestion, the pattern has not shifted and the schedule continues to expand as the game grows around it. Footballers want to play, that has never really been in doubt and for many that is the whole point of competing at this level. But wanting to play is not the same as being able to do so sustainably and what is increasingly missing is a structure and a level of support that allows players to meet those demands without it coming at a cost over time. At present, the game is still catching up with the demands it is placing on its players.

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