As Injuries Pile Up, it begs us to ask "Why is the Nations League a thing?"

With the latest international break having one week left before players return to their clubs, the costs of packed schedules continue to add up. 

With England's Joe Gomez suffering a catastrophic knee injury during training. Gomez had surgery two days ago, adding on to Liverpool's current injury crisis at the back, already having lost Virgil Van Dijk to a torn ACL. 

Nathan Ake of Manchester City and Steven Bergwijn of Tottenham both sustained injuries on duty with the Netherlands and have both been sent home. 

This brings me to ask an important question: Why have packed international fixtures? 

Having packed international fixtures will only achieve one thing: injuring key players of clubs. Take Gomez for example. Liverpool were already down one center back when Van Dijk tore his ACL last month. Now without Gomez, they're reduced to playing Joel Matip alongside Fabinho, a defensive midfielder by trade. 

These injury issues boil down to one thing that nobody understands: the UEFA Nation's League. 

The Nation's League tournament was born in 2018, with Portugal winning the inaugural edition. While it serves as a way for smaller nations to have an alternate qualifying route into the European Championships, the group stage of the tournament adds more fixtures to pre existent international friendlies, Euro qualification, and World Cup qualification, it puts players at an increased risk of injury due to the intense fixture schedule.

This tournament really has no purpose, and is the Audi Cup of international competition. For it to add extra matches to schedules that are unnecessary in times where players should be given time to rest their bodies and play low stakes friendlies is reckless on UEFA's part, but we all know they'll do anything for money, like their decision to host the 2019 Europa League Final in Baku, Azerbaijan.