It is perhaps telling that the first name inscribed on the new Club World Cup trophy – before even the first winner – was FIFA President Gianni Infantino.
Describing the new 32-team tournament as ‘the pinnacle of all club competitions’, the 24-carat gold trophy, crafted by Tiffany & Co, hailed the incumbent FIFA boss as the project’s inspiration and founding president. Barely a post goes out on Infantino’s social media accounts without his final approval and the wording on this trophy was no different.
But while the vanity of plastering one’s own name on a trophy may only rile up fans, it is the tournament itself that has caused FIFA a far worse headache.
Concerns over player workload have been bubbling under the surface for years and in many quarters, this expanded tournament has proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Players, who for so long have not been properly consulted about changes to the schedule, have had enough.
Manchester City midfielder Rodri – now out for the season with an ACL injury – said players were ‘close’ to taking strike action, while football unions are now turning to the courts in a bid to radically reshape the relationship between players and the game’s powerbrokers.
‘We’ve hit a tipping point – players are not robots’
Fredrik Aursnes had 20 international caps for Norway and, at age 28, was entering his physical peak. But he had to make a change.
In March earlier this year, Aursnes retired from international duty citing the relentless football calendar that gave him no time to rest physically or recharge mentally. ‘I want more time and freedom to prioritize other things than football in my life,’ he said.
Fredrik Aursnes retired from international duty aged just 28 (Picture: Getty)
Between July 2021 and May 2024, the Benfica midfielder was named in 168 matchday squads for club and country. During that time, he was afforded only 36 days of off-season break. His story may not have made headlines, but it painted a worrying picture.
Players are struggling to keep up.
Internationally, both the European Championship and World Cup have been expanded in recent editions, leaving England now averaging more than 13 games a year this decade – a record high.
At the elite club level, the story is no different. While some cup replays have been scrapped, the new elongated Champions League format means top-six Premier League clubs are still playing more than 50 competitive matches a season on average.
The effect of this is two-fold. November’s recent international break saw a record ten England players withdraw due to injury but that should come as no surprise.
According to Howden’s yearly report on injuries, the five major European Leagues saw a 4 per cent rise in injury instances last season when compared with the season prior. All five leagues have also seen a marked rise in injuries when looking back over the last four seasons, with the Bundesliga recording a drastic 66 per cent rise in instances of injuries from the 2020/21 season to last season.
The Premier League has seen a similar story, with clubs losing players for a combined 25,886 days last season due to injury. In 2020/21, that figure was 18,405 – a 40.6 per cent jump.
But for those players fortunate enough to stay fit, the match load can prove unrelenting.
Jude Bellingham, who made his professional debut for Birmingham City at age 16, had already played in 251 games for club and country by the time he turned 21 – a figure that puts him well ahead of former England players like Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard.
The increased fixture congestion is not only seeing players rack up appearances at record rates but also leading clubs to place unprecedented demands on younger players. Howden’s analysis suggests that in the 2023/24 season, Premier League players under 21 were sidelined for an average of 44 days per injury, a 187% increase compared to the 2020/21 season.
It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that players have begun to turn to their unions for help.
‘When I speak to PFA members who are playing in the Premier League, in Europe and for their country, it’s the number one issue they raise,’ Professional Footballers’ Association chief executive Maheta Molango told Metro.
‘Those players know how privileged they are to be in that position, but there are physical limits to how far they can be pushed. Right now, they are in a situation where they are essentially part of a year-round football calendar, with more and more games being added and tournaments being expanded. It never stops.
‘For those players, it’s not just about the number of games they are playing, but issues like minimum rest periods between back-to-back games and properly protected breaks in the off-season. We’re starting to hit a tipping point because they are not robots.’
Are strikes a feasible option?
Perhaps only Rodri will know if his threat of strike action was a throwaway comment. Given the calculated and precise manner in which he plays the game, one suspects not.
Regardless, it marked a serious escalation. Player unions had mooted the possibility of strikes earlier in the year but the City midfielder’s comments were one of the first times that an elite player had given the idea credence in a public forum.
Has there ever been a strike before in English football?
In 1960, the PFA – led by Jimmy Hill – sought to abolish the maximum weekly wage limit for players.
When the Football Association and Football League proposed a gradual increase in the maximum to £30 over five years, the PFA balloted its members who overwhelmingly voted to strike. Three days before the planned strikes, the FA and Football League eventually relented and abolished the limit.
Over 40 years later in 2001, players again voted to strike when the Premier League wanted to reduce the payment unions received from domestic broadcast deals from five per cent to two.
Eventually, a boycott of televised fixtures was averted when a deal was met to give the PFA £175m of broadcasting revenues over the following 10 years.
However, while the Spaniard suggested a strike could be ‘close’ there are still several obstacles that make it harder to achieve in reality.
‘There are two different ways they could strike. The first way is through collective action via the PFA or FIFPRO,’ Sarah Carrick, an expert in sports law and a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University told Metro.
‘If it was the PFA, they would ballot the members just the way you would do with a strike in any other workplace, and they would vote for and against it. The problem players have is this issue only affects a small portion of its members so it’s difficult to imagine they would garner a majority of the vote.
‘Players from League Two, for example, would probably be quite happy with an extra couple of games a season and an extra bit of money so they won’t want to strike. They probably don’t have that much sympathy for the top players calling it out who are on hundreds of thousands of pounds a week.’
The PFA or FIFPRO could seek to secure a mandate from its members to strike specific tournaments – most likely the Club World Cup in this case – but that would likely need the support from every club involved to work effectively and could get mired in legal challenges from FIFA.
Individual players could refuse to play but as Carrick explains: ‘There is probably not a clause within a player’s employment contract that accounts for a strike the way a normal employment contract would. So, there is a potential that if a player does go on strike they would be in breach of their contract and could be sued or fired by their clubs.’
It is perhaps for these reasons that the PFA chief Molango describes strike action as a ‘last resort’ and why it is increasingly likely that any hopes of tangible change rely on lawyers and courtrooms, an ever-increasing part of modern-day elite football.
Heading to the courtroom
While strikes are still some way off, in a legal sense, the battle with FIFA has already begun.
The first legal action was filed in June at the Brussels Court of Commerce. Along with the PFA, the Italian players’ union (AIC) and their French counterparts, the Union Nationale des Footballeurs Professionnels argue that FIFA’s new Club World Cup violates players’ rights under EU laws.
Four months later, FIFPRO – joined by the top European leagues – filed a legal complaint with the European Commission claiming that the governing body is ‘abusing its position of dominance’.
The second case, focusing on competition law rather than employment law, is seen as the more likely to succeed. It argues that FIFA’s power to set the international match schedule without sufficient consultation conflicts with its supposed responsibility to regulate the calendar. The hope, therefore, is to dilute those powers to set the match calendar.
FIFA disputes those claims. At the opening address to the 74th FIFA Congress in May, Infantino insisted the governing body is only ‘organising around 1% of the games of the top clubs in the world’, seemingly placing the emphasis back on clubs to tackle the issue of fixture congestion.
The organisation also pointed to the fact that the expanded Club World Cup was unanimously approved years ago by a number of bodies, including FIFPRO, and suggested that some leagues ‘are acting with commercial self-interest, hypocrisy, and without consideration to everyone else in the world’.
In a move to try and reach across the divide, FIFA has set up a task force on player welfare – led by former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger – to try and placate fears over workload. Unions, however, argue that this is only in reaction to their legal claims and that the task force was supposed to have been established 18 months earlier.
Despite publicly sticking to its guns, however, sources close to the lawsuit told Metro that FIFA is somewhat panicked by the prospect of an investigation by the European Commission, especially given recent rulings which have come down harshly on FIFA relating to the Super League and FIFA’s own transfer rules.
FIFA on issues relating to fixture congestion
‘The FIFA Club World Cup is not responsible for calendar congestion,’ a FIFA spokesperson told Metro.
‘It is a competitive tournament that takes place once every four years and, as independent studies have verified, FIFA is only responsible for a small percentage of matches per season. More precisely, less than 1% as far as clubs are concerned.
‘More generally, FIFA cares about the welfare of the players. Following a decision taken earlier this year, FIFA is formalising the Task Force on Player Welfare to promote further global dialogue on player welfare issues with key stakeholders across football.
‘The task force is headed by Arsene Wenger and includes representatives from associations, confederations, FIFPRO, ECA and the World Leagues Association.’
A European Commission ruling from 2001, which found that the FIA had ‘abused its power’ as the governing body for world motorsport, is seen as another crucial piece of legal precedent that could help FIFPRO’s claim.
Following that judgment, the FIA was forced to sell off its rights to the Formula One World Championship to ensure the organisation’s role was limited to that of a sports regulator. It also had to implement a more rigorous appeals process which, if ordered similarly after this current claim, could see unions and players given the power to reject calendar changes.
‘The thread that runs through many of the legal judgments we are seeing is that football’s international governing bodies do not have the power they may assume they do to enforce rules and structures without proper negotiation with leagues, clubs and players,’ PFA chief Molango added.
‘Taken together, this is about a fundamental reset of the football governance model.’
How does this end?
Neither side is expecting any sort of legal verdict to be passed prior to next summer’s Club World Cup – that could take years. But that doesn’t mean a solution can’t be found before then.
The unions are hoping that the threat of ongoing legal investigations may force FIFA to the table for proper negotiations about a restructuring of the power dynamic and to establish a collective bargaining agreement for players as seen in many US sports.
‘The need for legal action is, ultimately, a failure, as it means that football’s stakeholders haven’t managed to find a solution through proper negotiation,’ Molango said. ‘Unfortunately, that’s where we are, though, and legal action has become the avenue that we need to take to try and force change.
‘There should be proper negotiation with players, and a prioritisation of their wellbeing, because they are valued and because it’s the right thing to do – not because they have been pushed to breaking point and are now speaking out.
‘We feel as though those who run the game have had the message from the players loud and clear and so now it’s their job to respond in a way which properly reflects those concerns.’
‘FIFA taskforce to convene in coming weeks’
Whether the task force on player welfare introduced in October has any real power to vote on changes remains to be seen. FIFA has said that the task force will convene for the first time in the coming weeks.
Should the task force be given insufficient powers to help shape the match calendar, the threat of strikes will continue to linger. While wholesale industrial action is unlikely, small-scale disruption is not off the table.
Metro understands that players could be willing to boycott commercial and pre-match responsibilities or refuse to come out onto the pitch on time to send a message to the game’s governing bodies.
What is becoming increasingly clear is that the status quo can’t remain for much long. Football is at breaking point – something has to give.
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