Complaints and threats of strike. The players of soccer and their representatives, with studies to back them up, have taken the initiative to slow down the increasingly hellish pace of the international calendar, addressing the issue directly FIFA for not having taken into account their health.
This week the Spanish international media raised its voice Manchester City Rodriasked about the possibility of a footballers’ strike: “Yes, I think we are close.”
“If you ask any player, you will be told that this is a general opinion among footballers, it is not just Rodri’s opinion. If this continues, when the time comes we will have no other option,” he said about the possible strike.
Rodri gives the warning
Many footballers consider the schedule to be unsustainable. Rodri, for example, played around 60 games last season between City and the Spanish national team, with whom he won the European Championship, but ended up injured.
The current calendar is “in my humble opinion, excessive,” he insisted. “We have to take care of ourselves, we are the main actors in this sport, or in this business as we prefer to call it.”
Earlier in September, French centre-back Dayot Upamecano offered a similar opinion: “The spectators want a nice spectacle but it is difficult to produce it with all these matches.”
“I hope that (the football governing bodies) will understand one day that we play too many games, which causes injuries. We have had two injuries in the (French) national team and if things don’t change we will have more,” he continued.
Other key players such as Real Madrid captain Dani Carvajal and his coach Carlo Ancelotti, Liverpool’s Brazilian goalkeeper Allison and French coach Didier Deschamps have also lamented that players are not taken into account when drawing up the schedule.
Faced with this situation, FIFPRO, the international federation of footballers’ unions, through its national branches, filed a complaint against FIFA in June, after the international federation unilaterally established a calendar that included the creation of the Club World Cup.
The Club World Cup
At the heart of the conflict is the 32-team tournament to be held next summer in the United States, which, added to the existing ones, would create “an international calendar beyond saturation, unbearable for the national leagues and dangerous for the health of the players,” Fifpro Europe and the association of the leagues estimated on Wednesday.
Both clubs will lodge a complaint against FIFA with the European Commission on 14 October, citing competition law, as the various European leagues believe that the proliferation of international competitions is damaging the attractiveness of domestic championships.
“It is confirmed that a footballer who plays more than 55 games a year loses physical intensity and is more exposed to physical injuries and mental fatigue,” David Terrier, president of Fifpro Europe, told AFP.
In response to these complaints, FIFA cited a study by the CIES (International Centre for Sports Studies) explaining that “clubs are not playing more matches per season, which goes against the belief that the calendar is becoming more and more packed.”
From 2012 to 2024, “the average number of matches per club and per season remained stable at just above 40. Only 5% of teams play on average more than 60 matches per season (not including friendlies),” said the independent study.
