A footballer complaining of exhaustion is treated like one moaning that his bootlaces are too tight, or that he has a ladder in his tights.

A footballer complaining of exhaustion is treated like one moaning that his bootlaces are too tight, or that he has a ladder in his tights.

Real men run all day, they push themselves to the limits of human endurance. Fitness is all in the mind. Right? Well, yes, if you believe Stuart Pearce, that well-known sports science expert.

The England under-21 manager was apoplectic earlier this month when David Bentley pulled out of the squad for the European Championships, currently taking place in Holland. According to Pearce, his decision to withdraw with fatigue was "a disgrace". Cue much pontificating about how Pearce would have run through brick walls to pull on the Three Lions.

Bentley withdrew because he feared burnout next season. In the last campaign he played 51 games for Blackburn, represented England Under-21s several times and spent three weeks with the senior squad for recent games against Brazil and Estonia. If he had gone to the under-21 championships and reached the final, he would have had only six days off before a return to pre-season with his club.

Blackburn's involvement in the Intertoto Cup would have ushered in another 60-game season. Bentley has aspirations of making the senior squad for Euro 2008 and wants to be in the best shape he can. So he withdrew. Aston Villa's Gabriel Agbonlahor was also an absentee, with his manager, Martin O'Neill, having sent him on holiday for a rest.

Damning comparisons were made between Bentley and James Milner, who played even more games last season for Newcastle, and Preston's David Nugent, who played the same number. Fair enough. Unlike Bentley, they showed a willingness to push themselves physically. But does that make their decision to play right and Bentley's wrong?

Fatigue is not a new issue, but it is an increasingly prevalent one within world football. Sven-Goran Eriksson, the former England manager, frequently argued that no other European country places so many demands on its players as England. "We need fewer teams in the Premier League but that's impossible," he said. "We also need them to have a winter break but I don't know if we'll get that."

The intensity of the English and world game is greater than ever. As far back as 2002, FIFA announced plans to impose a limit on the number of games a player could play in a season. Professor Jiri Dvorak, Fifa's medical chief, said that they had decided to make the controversial move after the star players of the 2002 World Cup showed obvious signs of exhaustion.

Dvorak said: "There are rules about the maximum number of hours per day you can drive a truck, but there are no rules for footballers. Guidelines on the number of games that players may play in a season would benefit them by keeping them as healthy as possible. Some players at the top clubs in Europe can play 70 games per season. We have realised the magnitude of the problem of injuries and the related cost of players' absences."

The reality: nothing happened. The political machinations involved in passing such measures ensured Dvorak's plans were left to gather dust. Instead, they opted for a diluted version. Before last summer's World Cup, it was insisted that players have a four-week break between the end of the league season and the start of the tournament on June 9. It helped, but was not enough to offset the global football congestion.

The Japanese media had the temerity to criticise Shunsuke Nakamura's "tired" performance against Colombia in their recent friendly. The midfielder had just finished a 50-game season and is now preparing for Japan's Asian Cup campaign. He will have less than a week's holiday before rejoining Celtic ahead of the new season. What is more, this is the second summer in a row in which Nakamura has not had a break, after last summer's World Cup.

Closer to home, Hibs' promising young striker Steven Fletcher had a huge season, which began on July 2 when Hibs defeated Dinaburg in the Intertoto Cup, before he joined up with the Scotland Under-19 squad for their European Championship campaign in Poland. He played in four games, scoring twice, then made 43 appearances at Hibs.

He played once for the under-21s, three friendlies for the under-20s, two in Canada in March, and will represent Scotland at the Under-20 World Cup in Canada this summer. If Scotland reach the final on July 22, Fletcher will return to Hibs just in time for the start of the new season.

Bentley will not be the last player to adopt self-preservation techniques in the face of the increasing demands of modern football.