Of course there's a certain lack of respect that these big clubs show to internationals from less established players - TNT has seen it in the past with basically pissing tail clubs from League 1 and League 2. I distinctly remember some club manager referring to the qualifiers with Bahrain as unimportant !
However, a lot of people missing the point. You can't compare a two-three week tournament that basically requires players to miss a month of games (for the finalist clubs) to a one off international on a Fifa match day.
When players play a tournament in summer, it always reduces their recuperation time, for the next season, but at least that is the only negative point you could find whereas, when we dealing with tournaments in the middle of the season, noto nly is there the fatigue of an intense number of games in a short period, but you have the games missed as well
If is one man will always prefer international ball to club ball anyday, is me.
However, the CAN scheduling is a hold back from the days when the vast majority of African international players actually use to play in Africa. This is less and less the case now. THAT is the answer to your question Toppa. Any self respecting tournament needs to adapt to the changing realities that define it. The day the Gold Cup gets people to respect it, and the MLS happens to be the dominant league furnishing national team players in Concacaf, they will have to take a break during the tournament. They won't have a choice.
I suppose one could argue that climatic conditions *might* render it impractical to do the CAN during the summer break according to the country that hosting (outside of austral africa), but I want somebody to cofirm that for me.