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Premier League is intense, but at what cost?

"I hear a lot of times about the intensity in the Premier League when none of you have been in La Liga or the Bundesliga to know how intense it is," Pep Guardiola told a roomful of British journalists last week. He added, "I think the intensity in Italy and other places is quite the same." Then he took his Manchester City team to Barcelona and was thrashed 4-0.

Guardiola's words reawakened an old debate: Is the Premier League especially intense? And what does "intensity" even mean in soccer? I've tried to answer this question, with the help of eyewitness reports and a dollop of data.