Five matches in eighteen days is a brutal way to start a season, and Real Sociedad's coach has responded the way the math demands. Pellegrino Matarazzo, the New Jersey-born manager now in charge at the Basque club, has leaned on nearly his entire roster to survive the opening stretch, reportedly using all 22 available first-team players plus two from the reserve side, with 18 different men starting matches.

That is rotation at full tilt, and it is exactly what a compressed calendar requires. When games come every three or four days, the traditional idea of a settled best eleven collapses. The best coaches stop asking who their eleven best players are and start asking who can give them the freshest legs on Saturday given who played on Wednesday.

But the story has a warning inside it. For all the spreading of minutes, two players have not been spared. Reports from San Sebastian flag Jon Mikel Aramburu and Sergio Gomez, the two wide men in Matarazzo's setup, as having played nearly every available minute, completing full games in four of the first five rounds. The concern being raised is that the physical demand on those wingback roles has become disproportionate, and that both are now edging toward the red zone.

That combination, heavy rotation everywhere except in one or two roles, is one of the most common traps in the modern game, and it shows up on youth teams constantly. A coach rotates the strikers, rotates the midfield, rotates the center backs, and then plays the same two fullbacks or the same holding midfielder every single minute because there is no one else who can do that specific job. The rotation looks healthy on the team sheet and hides a real overload in one position.

For US coaches, the fullback and wingback positions are the classic culprits. They cover the most ground of any outfield role, and they are often the hardest to backfill because the job blends defending, sprinting, and delivery. If you have one kid who can genuinely play there and no real backup, you are running the same problem Matarazzo is, just without the medical staff to catch it early.

The practical response is to develop that depth before the fixture pileup arrives, not during it. In your preseason, teach a second and third player the wingback job even if they will not start there. Move a winger back, move a center back wide in training, build the tactical understanding while the games are still spread out. When the schedule compresses, whether that is a weekend tournament, a doubleheader, or a state-cup run, you want more than one answer at the most demanding position on the field.

Matarazzo's opening tells both halves of the story at once. The willingness to use 24 bodies is a strength, and the reliance on two irreplaceable wingbacks is the crack in it. For a coach reading this before your own busy stretch, the question is simple. If your most-run position had to sit for a game, could someone else do it, or have you quietly built your whole plan on one kid's legs holding up?