The ongoing battle between football clubs around the world and international squads returned last week when national team managers named their 23-man squads for the upcoming friendlies and European qualifiers.

The argument — which has spanned decades — that the international break is becoming more and more of a hindrance to league clubs will continue to fill the back pages and debates in pubs.

The latest players to be in the middle of the war between club and country is Diego Costa and Daniel Sturridge.

Costa is currently struggling with a hamstring injury which prevents him from training properly in between games and Blues manager Jose Mourinho wanted Spanish coach Vincente del Bosque to not select the former Atletico Madrid striker, instead allowing him to stay at Chelsea’s Cobham training complex to recover and work with club doctors.

However, Del Bosque picked the Blues hitman and rightly so. Costa may have come out and said that he will only play if he feels fully fit but it sounds like a player too scared to go against his manager’s wishes.

Last month, Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers lost Sturridge (right) for three weeks after the striker picked up a thigh strain in an England friendly.

Rodgers criticised the way national team manager Roy Hodgson handled the former Chelsea and Manchester City player, saying he should have received special treatment and an extra day’s rest.

Last week, he ordered Hodgson to not pick Sturridge for the up-coming Euro 2016 qualifiers and, to my astonishment, the former Liverpool and Fulham manager left him out of the England squad.

Rodgers even had the cheek to say that Sturridge may feature for the Reds in that weekend’s game against West Brom — although he played no part in the 2-1 victory — but was unfit to represent his country, despite the game being nearly a week later.

Arsene Wenger is one of the many managers who hates the international break as more often than not one of his Arsenal players

returns from international duty with an injury.

In 2011, Wenger had asked for Jack Wilshere to be rested for England’s match against Switzerland, played in June, as the then 19-year-old had just finished a gruelling domestic campaign with the Gunners and the Arsenal manager wanted him rested during the summer.

However, Wilshere played in the match and picked up an ankle injury. At the time I had sympathy for the Arsenal manager but all that went out the window when the Frenchman played him a month later, in a meaningless pre-season friendly against New York Red Bulls, knowing full well that Wilshere was playing with an injury, and lost the midfielder for five months.

That is poor management at the club and no blame can be placed at the door of the national team. Wenger should have rested Wilshere and, had this been the other way round, Arsenal would have been livid that the former Bolton loanee was allowed to play when not 100 per cent fit.

To all those managers mentioned as well as the others who have escaped this column — for now — I say stop complaining.

If you want a player to be rested, rest them yourselves. You have them for the majority of the season and burn them out by playing them week-in week-out.

I understand that clubs pay their wages and technically suffer the consequences when a player comes back injured and misses a certain amount of club games.

But a player can pick up an injury at any time during the season and if they weren’t playing for their country the chances are the club will have them training in order to become fitter for the long season ahead.

Sturridge could do with some competitive football and I feel Rodgers should have sat down with Hodgson and worked out a light schedule for the striker to lead him back to full fitness.

Two weeks at Melwood — Liverpool’s training centre — doing light-jogging is not the same as 20 minutes in a competitive match, albeit a meaningless Euro 2016 qualifier. Even a behind-closed-doors friendly against a young lower-league side cannot replicate a run-out against San Marino tomorrow or Estonia on October 12.

Former Manchester United midfielder Nicky Butt revealed earlier this month that Alex Ferguson used to tell players that they were not allowed to play in friendlies for their country and that managerial power still exists today.

Until the players stand up for themselves — they say that they love playing for their country — or the FA demands that players must represent their country when called upon, we will continue to see teams continue to win the battle between club and country.

Pulling on your national team’s shirt should be an honour and privilege but if the power continues to shift away from the international managers, we may end up not seeing the top “stars” representing their country as more and more managers withdraw their players in games they consider “meaningless.”

And the FA wonders why just 40,181 fans turned up for the friendly against Norway.

But that’s a whole different topic for another week.