Players accuse Fifa of abuse in legal battle over calendar

There should be something thrilling about Fifa’s idea fora quadrennial Club World Cup: another World Cup every fourth summer starring the biggest clubs all over the globe sounds like a recipe for the Holy Grail of football tournaments. So it says a lot about the state of the game that the primary reactions have been apathy and anger. Fans want a break and so do the players.

- LAWRENCE OSTLERE

“The problem will come when we finish the Club World Cup,” sighed Kevin De Bruyne last month. “We know there will only be three weeks between the Club World Cup final and the first day of the Premier League. You have three weeks to take a vacation, and prepare to play another 80 games ... They don’t care. It’s money that talks.”

Yesterday, the global players’ association Fifpro sat beside Europe’s major leagues, including the Premier League, at the Residence Palace in Brussels to launch a joint legal action against Fifa. They accuse Fifa of acting unilaterally to push through the Club World Cup – set to take place in the US next June and July – without full consultation, squeezing every minute out of players for financial gain and acting in breach of European law.

“Fifa controls the international match calendar,” the group said at a press conference. “It abuses this power to expand its own competitions and increase its revenues. It pushes the players to their physical and mental limits.”

Fifa argues that the international calendar was approved by representatives of all continents after formal discussions, but Fifpro believes it has a strong case backed by recent court judgments such as the Lassana Diarra case last week, in which some of Fifa’s player transfer rules were found to be incompatible with EU law. There is a feeling within Fifpro that the ruling set a precedent for its own case by revealing how Fifa exploits its authority.