How do you keep Barcelona/Madrid players match fit?

I've recently taken the Barcelona job on my save game having only managed in England previously, and have discovered a problem in terms of keeping my 1st team squad match fit. At English clubs, I would make the players who weren't regular starters available to the reserves so that they maintained their match fitness. However, this isn't possible in Spain because there is no reserve squad, but Barcelona 'B' instead. If a player has been registered for the main 1st team squad, you can't move them to the B squad, and if they are over 19 you can't make them available to the youth team. I am frequently finding that lots of my players are severely lacking in match fitness and I don't really want to employ a squad rotation system. Additionally, even if I did there would still remain the problem of players coming back from injury - this takes far longer to bring them back to fitness because they are limited at first to odd sub appearances.

So I just wanted to ask how other people deal with this issue, or if anyone has any advice on the best way of keeping players in Spain match fit.

Smaller squad & rotate more.

Aside from that don't worry about fringe players not being match fit. Coming back from injury just start them and leave them on the full match, within a couple of matches they'll be fit again.

As long as the fringe players aren't "yours", and cannot challenge for the first team, I'd say I agree with Cougar2010. However, once you have replaced those useless players with your own players - for instance hot prospects or players that could compete with the 1st 11 - I will strongly advice you to rotate more. It pays off towards the end of a long season with 60+ matches, where the majority (League and domestic cup) can be won easily without the superstars who will then be 100% fit when you really need them to be.

I rotate so heavily that most of the squad gets between 20 and 35 matches per season. This makes the squad harmony excellent, injuries irrelevant (and rare), youngster development excellent and unfortunately top goalscorer and other awards uncommon. It is a good trade-off.

Thanks for the responses - makes sense. I think I will have to adapt my approach somewhat for Barcelona and look to have quality throughout instead of having a great first 11 with youngsters getting experience from reserves and occasional first team appearances (the youngsters can just stick it out in the B team or on loan). Given the budget Barca give for players it's not difficult to fill the squad with quality...!

I play with Barcelona at the moment, although some 25 seasons in and I agree that it takes some work to keep the team fit. I got about 20-22 players registered for the A-team in the league and rotate them rather evenly. With the financial resources of that team it is easy to keep good enough backups to play a couple each game with the rest from the first 11.

Then I try and keep a good set of prospects 18-20 years old in the B-team, they will work as back ups during injuries and also get first team football in less important matches. I always make sure the right players get registered for the B-team so that I can make use of them. Since the Spanish schedual is pretty intense with 2 legged cups and such and adding European competition I have found that rotating a few players every game is necessary to keep them at good fitness lvls.