Right. Joan Laporta has come out swinging at FIFA because Raphinha's gone and done his whatever during the international break and is now out for five weeks. Five weeks. And the Barcelona president is raging about how FIFA don't keep the biggest clubs in mind when they schedule these pointless jaunts around the globe.

And I'm sat here thinking: welcome to the party, Joan. Only about forty years late, mate.

In my day, we didn't have presidents of massive football clubs doing press conferences about this stuff. You know why? Because everyone already accepted it was a disaster. Your best player went off with England, came back with a dodgy hamstring, and you just got on with it. You stuck the reserve lad in and hoped for the best. Nobody rang the papers. Nobody "raged." You just swore a lot in the car park and picked a different team.

But here's the thing. And I can't believe I'm saying this. Laporta's actually got a point.

The international calendar is an absolute joke. It has been for years. FIFA keep cramming more and more fixtures in. Nations League. World Cup qualifiers. Friendlies that nobody on earth wants to watch. And the clubs, the ones who actually pay these players' wages, just have to sit there and take it. Wave goodbye to your £60 million winger and pray he comes back in one piece.

Don't get me started on the timing of it all. Barcelona are in the middle of a season defining run. Three games against Atlético in ten days. LaLiga title race. Champions League knockouts. And FIFA have just casually nicked one of their best players for over a month because Brazil needed him for some qualifier they'd probably have won without him anyway.

That's the problem with modern football. Too many games. Too many competitions. Too many people with their hands in the till wanting a piece of the action. Players are being run into the ground and then everyone acts shocked when they snap like a cheap deckchair at Blackpool.

I managed in the lower leagues for twenty years. We didn't have international breaks. Well, we did, but none of my lads were getting called up by anyone. Closest we got was when my centre half played for the local pub quiz team on a Wednesday night. But even I could see it was madness. The big clubs would lose three or four players every six weeks and be expected to just crack on like nothing happened.

And what does FIFA do about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They add more games. They expand tournaments. They shove the Club World Cup in wherever there's a gap. It's like watching someone try to fix a leaky roof by pouring more water on it.

Laporta says FIFA don't consider the clubs. He's right. FIFA don't consider anyone except FIFA. That's been the case since I was in short trousers. The difference now is the stakes are astronomical. These players are worth hundreds of millions. The clubs are playing for billions in prize money. And the whole thing hinges on whether some international team manager decides to play your star man for ninety minutes in a dead rubber in March.

You want to know the solution? Scrap half the international windows. Play qualifiers in the summer. Leave the club season alone. But that'll never happen because it makes too much sense and there's not enough money in it for the blazers at FIFA headquarters.

So instead we'll get more press conferences. More presidents raging. More players on treatment tables. And more people like me shouting at the television.

Laporta's furious now. Give it another twenty years of this, Joan. You'll be past furious. You'll be me.

And trust me, nobody wants that.