Footballers and leagues condemn FIFA in front of Brussels for the saturation of matches in the calendar | Football | Sport
This Monday, footballers and European leagues took another step in the legal battle they have been waging for months against FIFA over the saturation of the calendar. Continental players’ union Fifpro Europe and the European Leagues (the association of European leagues) filed a complaint in Brussels with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition, which is responsible for ensuring that companies compete on fair and equitable terms throughout the EU, against this organization, understanding that its role the regulator of world football and at the same time the organizer of international competitions represents a conflict of interest. That is, the union and employers believe that the ability of the body chaired by Gianni Infantino to unilaterally set the calendar with the creation of new tournaments, such as the Club World Cup, which will be held on December 15, violates Union law, from June to July 13, 2025 in the United States with with 32 teams, the layout is almost identical to that of the World Cup, which is also organized by FIFA every four years.
The commission received the complaint on Monday morning. While the focus here is on the unilateral imposition of the calendar, it largely highlights that FIFA has a conflict of interest as a “competition organizer and regulator”, which the plaintiffs argue constitutes “an abuse of a dominant position and breaches EU law” . .
The reasoning follows that set out in an EU Court of Justice ruling last December in which the Super League twisted UEFA’s arm. This ruling indicates that in order to mitigate potential conflicts of interest, FIFA must carry out its functions in a “transparent” and “proportionate” manner. Therefore, club representatives and players demand that the calendar be agreed upon. From then on, a process begins in which Brussels has an optional period of four months to decide whether to open a case, which the applicants are confident of thanks to legal precedents. However, the ideal for clubs and players would be to find a solution between the three parties – the leagues, players and FIFA – which would then be approved by the European Commission.
If this scenario does not open up – and if the powerful competition department of the community executive decides to proceed with the case, which it would likely already have done under the leadership of Spain’s Teresa Ribera – the process that every complaint follows, and which could end with an appropriate fine.
The document presented today is causing controversy due to the backlog of matches and complaints from some players due to the number of injuries caused by the congestion of the calendar. Fifpro and European leagues, which also denounce FIFA’s undermining of the economics of domestic tournaments due to a lack of dialogue on the creation of new competitions, accuse the organization of putting players’ health and their right to rest at risk by organizing new tournaments. or expand them, as in the 2026 World Cup, which will feature 48 teams for the first time, to promote, with virtually no dialogue with the leagues’ unions and employers, their commercial interests with more matches, more television rights, more sponsors and more tickets to sell. In short, more money.
The likes of Rodri and Dani Carvajal, both seriously injured, raised their voices to complain about the accumulation of matches before suffering ligament tears that would keep them out of the playing field for the rest of the season. Rodri is a fundamental player for Manchester City and the Spanish national team, while Carvajal is a fundamental player for Real Madrid and La Roja. Both belong to clubs that compete and win European competitions and play on the team that won the European Championship in Germany this summer, that is, they are part of the elite of footballers who are primarily affected by the congestion of the calendar: Players of the international team that they participate in every season in the Champions League and that year after year they are the ones who play the most games and have the least time to rest.
(Latest news. Extension coming soon.)