Of course the World Cup is dull, the players are all on their knees after 60 games

The ball is a bit too round. The air is a bit too thin. The crowds parp a bit too hard on their placky trumpets.

Horsefeathers. This tournament has sucked the sweat of a dead man's you-know-whats for two simple reasons. These are: a) most teams have been set up to play negatively; and b) most games have been contested by players who look bloody shattered.

Wayne Rooney referred laconically this week to the slog that international players at the best clubs go through. "It's a long old season, that's for sure," he said. "I'd certainly welcome a break around Christmas time."

Rooney then shrugged off the effects of the grind: "It's something you just get used to." But that sweeps the problem under the astroturf. Rooney played 52 times this season before the World Cup. Compared to some of his fellow stars, he got off lightly.

Before this tournament, Didier Drogba had played 58 games. Steven Gerrard 55, Lionel Messi 63 and Cristiano Ronaldo, even with Real Madrid's truncated European campaign, still played 43 times. Maicon, the buttress of Inter's Treble-winning fortress, appeared in an astonishing 65 matches.

That's just silly. And counterproductive. The World Cup has been shorn of good players whose bodies have simply crumpled under the strain. (Rio Ferdinand, Michael Ballack, Arjen Robben etc.) And many of those players who are still pushing towards their 60th or 70th games of the season look mentally shot to bits.

Any personal trainer or military drill sergeant will tell you: the human mind breaks down before the body. The more physically exhausted you are, the worse your decision-making ability, speed of thought and spatial awareness become. The limbs move but the brain loses its edge.

Among the players who look like they're suffering this way: Frank Lampard, who blew hard against the USA. Ronaldo, who faded after 20 minutes against the Ivory Coast. Kaka, who was lacklustre against North Korea. Fernando Torres, who was listless against Switzerland.

There are exceptions, sure. Maicon was energetic in Brazil's first game. Diego Forlan monstered South Africa on Wednesday. (But remember: he is genetically 30 per cent horse.) Messi is a genius and has looked it, albeit against limited opposition thus far. Yet in the main, many players look worryingly short on gas.

The solution, as Rooney says, is obviously a January break — even if only in World Cup seasons. But who's going to agree to that? To make it work, someone gets keistered on the financials. The clubs you whack from the Premier League to reduce the fixture list; the TV men who lose valuable pay-per-views, the ad men who get less bang for their buck; the agents losing percentage points on their players' appearance-related contracts.

There is an insatiable global demand for football — whether it's international, European or domestic. It inspires greed and overprovision.

You pay, they play. You pay all year round, they play all year round. Many of these World Cup players will be flogging around shirt-selling tours to China, America and the Arab States before July is out. Next May they will have been playing constantly for nearly two years.

It's not just football. Rugby is grinding its players pretty small, too. And cricket is a jamboree that is leaving players physically wrecked and captains like England's Andrew Strauss abandoning their sides when they play Tests in unappealing venues like Bangladesh.

In all these sports, the players are overpaid to be overplayed. And yeah, cry me a river for the £150,000-a-week man who gets a bit jaded.

But at the same time, players are not perpetual motion machines. When they get tired, the spectacle — the thing you pay for with your Sky+ bill or your TV licence, your crate of Budweiser or your £80 replica football — well, that turns mush.

If a winter break is not introduced we can look forward to more and more of these big tournaments flopping. The best players stale. The action dreary.

And the great unwashed, so generous with our patience, so forgiving of yawning pap dressed up as The Greatest Show On Earth, will finally give the whole farrago the swerve it very well deserves.

Come on then, FIFA, you do the math.