"Players agree that enjoying a break during winter can better help them avoid injuries and maintain better physical form than having to play through multiple competitions under the scorching summer sun." That's Lee Keun-ho, president of South Korea's Pro Footballers Association — and when 86.2% of surveyed players say the summer heat is physically hurting them, it's hard to argue with the man.
The KPFA formally called on the K League this week to scrap its current spring-to-autumn structure and move to a fall-spring calendar. The demand isn't abstract. On August 2, the southeastern city of Yangsan hit 42.5 degrees Celsius — the highest temperature in decades of official records. Seoul logged 17 consecutive tropical nights before temperatures finally relented on Monday. The Korean baseball league suspended play for a full week. Football kept going.
What the player survey actually reveals
The union surveyed 536 players across the professional men's and women's leagues. The results are uncomfortable reading for K League administrators. Of those surveyed, 64.7% reported dizziness during matches. More than half — 56.6% — said they suffered from dehydration. Thirteen percent reported temporary loss of consciousness. These aren't minor inconveniences. These are red flags.
Only 15.3% of players said current cooling-break policies were adequate. Nearly half — 48.4% — said they weren't. That's not a split decision. That's a mandate.
The Manchester City pre-season visit last week added a quietly embarrassing footnote: their friendly against a K League All Star XI drew noticeably thin crowds because of the heat, while their match against Atlético Madrid — played in better conditions — sold out. When your showcase exhibition struggles to fill seats because it's too hot to sit outside, the calendar problem stops being abstract.
The case for change is stronger than the obstacles
The argument for reform has real structural logic behind it. Japan's J. League just flipped to a summer-to-spring schedule. The AFC Champions League Elite made the switch in 2023. Most of Europe has operated this way for decades. The K League, Asia's oldest professional football league, is increasingly the outlier.
The obvious counter-argument is South Korea's winter. Subzero temperatures and heavy snowfall are genuine constraints from December to February — you can't just extend the season into those months and expect it to work. Lee's proposed solution is a winter break, pausing competition rather than pushing through the cold.
He also called for structural investment: more heating infrastructure at stadiums, hybrid grass pitches built to withstand both extremes. Sensible asks. The kind that suggest the players' association has thought this through beyond just lodging a complaint.
Whether the K League moves on any of this is another matter entirely. League administrators have been slow to act on schedule reform for years. But with the data now public — dizziness in 65% of players, temporary blackouts in 13% — the burden of inaction just got a lot heavier to carry.
