Germany's former captain and coach Franz Beckenbauer blamed the surprise defeats of leading teams at the World Cup on player burn-out yesterday and called on soccer authorities to take action to reduce the number of games.
Beckenbauer said many of the world's leading players had looked tired at the finals including Zinedine Zidane's defending champions France who failed to score a goal as they were eliminated in the first round.
"There are billions of people watching this World Cup and they are watching tired stars. This is not the future. It is impossible," Beckenbauer said.
"In South America they had to play 18 qualifying games. This is impossible. FIFA has to react to this situation."
Beckenbauer, who captained the Germans to their 1974 World Cup triumph and was the coach of the 1990 World Cup-winning team, said it was a big disappointment that the French had gone out.
The former libero, who some people believe may become president of FIFA one day, pinpointed France midfielder Patrick Vieira, who plays for Arsenal, as an example of burn-out.
"How many games has he played? Eighty or 90. It is impossible to be fresh with 38 league games, 17 Champions League games and Cup games. It is logical that you have to be tired. You could see that they were tired."
He said Italy, who scraped their way into the second round of the World Cup with a 1-1 draw against Mexico on Thursday, had played as though they were not happy to be at the finals.
"The way Italy played, I had the impression that they wanted to go home," said Beckenbauer who listed Brazil and England as his new favourites to win the tournament after tipping Argentina and France before the finals started.
Argentina were also eliminated in the first round. "Brazil are favourites. England are playing well too - especially in their defeat of Argentina, they were excellent. They could go far," said the former libero, attending his ninth World Cup.
Beckenbauer is now the head of Germany's organising committee for the 2006 World Cup. But he is still an influential figure at Bayern Munich - who are often leading contenders in the Champions League and won the competition in 2001.
He said Bayern had often put forward the view that there should be only one group phase in the world's premier club competition, suggesting that the second round should be knockout instead of further round-robin matches.
"We are almost alone in this," he told Reuters yesterday.
"You cannot solve the problem in the next two to three years because of the television contract. But after the contract expires, we have got to talk."