Celtic is not the only club lacking energy right now. Football is killing its teams.

Last night, in the aftermath of the Celtic game, Martin O’Neill said something very interesting. He talked about how unhappy he is with the energy levels of the players. That was absolutely evident yesterday.

Paulina is right to talk about how the team is digging in and continuing to fight, even though so many external critics, and a lot of our own fans, do not think we are going to do this. The effort is definitely there. But I agree with the manager that something is wrong with the energy.

Do not get me wrong. I still think we have enough in the tank. If we can add a little more quality to our front play, we still have a very good chance.

But “enough in the tank” is the kind of phrase you use when you are counting the miles, working out how far you have left to go, and calculating the cost of all the fuel that has already been burned to get here.

There is a reason the players at this club look like this right now.

This Celtic squad has relied on the same core group of players for almost the entire campaign. That campaign has also been longer than any campaign any other club in this league has had to play.

We had two Champions League qualifiers, followed by a full package of Europa League group games, followed by Europa League second-stage games. We reached the League Cup final. Next weekend we are trying to reach the Scottish Cup final. It just goes on and on. No Celtic side has played this many games.

From now on, this is the pattern. Football has gone mad.

When players are not playing domestic games, they are playing an ever-increasing number of international fixtures and European matches. The European side of it is good, of course.

The money for doing well in Europe has never been better. If only we were putting more of it onto the pitch where it belongs instead of letting it pile up in the bank. Still, the money is there, and with it you can build a proper foundation for later on down the road.

We are not the only people in football talking about the weight players are carrying right now. There is a lot of this discussion out there.

A recent article in The Guardian following the England v Japan game talked about how leg-weary English teams look this season. That has shown up in plenty of domestic games. It has also shown up in some of the Champions League and Europa League results. The Champions League in particular has been revealing, because a number of really top-tier teams have players who look absolutely spent.

This is all before a World Cup in the summer.

Consider how many of those teams also had to play in FIFA’s latest little vanity project, the Club World Cup, which Chelsea won.

That adds another layer to the whole thing. It adds another competition that the top teams have to navigate, and nothing is getting any easier. Football keeps finding new ways to pile fixture on top of fixture on top of fixture.

National associations worry about this. Domestic leagues worry about it. Players’ unions and clubs worry about it.

How have the governing bodies responded?

They have increased the size of the World Cup.

They have increased the size of the Euros.

These continental associations have dragged more players and more countries into those summer competitions than ever before. At the same time, they have expanded access to the European competitions and made them multi-tier with more matches than ever.

I am not exaggerating when I talk about the advantage Hearts have. I mean that literally. This is not me trying to find reasons to justify my comments that, when they have to play European football next season, their title challenge will fade and die.

Teams all over Europe are dropping like flies because their players are exhausted. Some will burn out by the end of the summer, and then clubs will expect them to launch straight into a brand-new domestic season with everything that entails.

You will see top clubs suffer for it.

A lot of the success we have enjoyed in the last few years has come at the expense of the players and their fitness. We are not an elite-level club with all the elite-level perks. I would bet there are things English Premier League sides do for player conditioning and recovery that we simply do not have access to.

It is easier for them, even though some of those clubs go further in Europe than we do and play more games internationally than we do.

Yet when top journalists in The Guardian are watching England and saying the players look out on their feet, that tells you this is now a serious problem even at the highest level.

Look at someone like Callum McGregor, who very rarely gets a break even domestically. Look at someone like Kieran Tierney. How long has it been since Kieran Tierney played this many games and this much football? It is not just that he is doing it for Celtic. He is still a Scotland international. He is still playing for that team and he is going to the World Cup.

The smartest thing Callum McGregor ever did was quit international football. Otherwise, he would be there too. That is before you even think about the Celtic players who will be there and who are not going to get a summer off as a result.

Some of these guys are going to return for pre-season training without a proper break, and they already look out of it right now. When we hit those crazy months of November and December next year, those months where there is a game every three days, we are going to need a much bigger and much better squad than we have right now if we are going to cope. Some of these players are going to drop like flies.

They have pushed themselves all season long, and there is not much time left in which they still have to keep pushing to get over the line.

It is still a huge ask. It is still painful to watch.

Footballers are working harder, playing more games and getting less rest than at any other time in the sport’s history. That is a fact. The more successful you are, the more games you play. There is no more successful club in Scotland than us.

That is reflected in the fixture list. It is also reflected in the condition of some of our players, guys who have been pushing themselves to this limit for longer and longer every year.

Martin O’Neill was right to talk about it. He is right to highlight it, and he should be concerned about it. We should all be concerned about it.

But he is not talking about players lacking motivation.

It is not that at all. Some of these guys are just done. I honestly do not know what is keeping them on their feet.

But I can only hope they can last a little bit longer.

I just wish we had a full summer to rest them and I certainly do not envy the ones who are going to America for that World Cup. We are going to need to keep those players very, very fresh if they are still going to be standing this time next year.

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