This Monday, footballers and European leagues have taken another step in the legal battle they have been carrying out for months against FIFA over calendar saturation. Fifpro Europe – the continental union of players – and European Leagues – the association of European leagues – have filed a complaint in Brussels with the Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission, in charge of ensuring that companies compete under fair and equitable conditions in the entire EU, against the organization, understanding that its role as regulator of world football and at the same time organizer of international competitions represents a conflict of interest. That is to say, the union and the employers consider that the capacity of the body chaired by Gianni Infantino to unilaterally establish the calendar, with the creation of new tournaments, such as the Club World Cup, which will be held on December 15, violates Union legislation. June to July 13, 2025 in the United States with the participation of 32 teams, a design almost identical to that of the National Team World Cup, which is also organized by FIFA every four years.
The Commission received the complaint this Monday morning. Although this focuses on the unilateral imposition of the calendar, it greatly emphasizes that FIFA has a conflict of interest by being a “competition organizer and regulatory body”, which according to the plaintiffs represents an “abuse of a dominant position and violates the EU law.
The reasoning follows that set out in the ruling of the EU Court of Justice last December in which the Super League twisted UEFA’s hand. That ruling indicates that to dilute the potential conflict of interest, a body like FIFA must exercise its functions in a “transparent” and “proportionate” manner. Hence the representatives of the clubs and the players demand to negotiate the calendar. From now on, a process opens in which Brussels has a non-mandatory period of four months to decide whether to open the file, something of which the complainants are certain due to legal precedents. However, for clubs and footballers the ideal would be to negotiate a solution between the three parties – leagues, players and FIFA – which would then be validated by the European Commission. If this scenario does not open – and if the powerful Competition Department of the Community Executive decides to go ahead with the file, something that it would probably already do under the direction of the Spanish Teresa Ribera -, the process that follows every complaint begins and can end with the corresponding fine.
The document presented today comes in the midst of controversy due to the accumulation of matches and complaints from some footballers due to the number of injuries caused by the overload of the calendar. Fifpro and the European leagues, which also denounce that FIFA undermines the economy of national tournaments due to its lack of dialogue to create new competitions, accuse the organization of putting the health of players and their right to rest at risk by establishing new tournaments. —or expand them, like the 2026 World Cup, which will have 48 teams for the first time— to promote, without hardly any dialogue with unions and league employers, their commercial interests with more matches, more television rights, more sponsors and more tickets to sell. In short, more money for everyone.
Footballers like Rodri and Dani Carvajal, both seriously injured, had raised their voices to complain about the accumulation of matches before suffering ligament tears that will keep them off the playing fields for the remainder of the season. Rodri is a fundamental piece of Manchester City and the Spanish team, and Carvajal is a fundamental piece of Real Madrid and also of La Roja. Both belong to clubs that compete and win European competitions and play in the national team that this summer won the European Championship in Germany, that is, they are part of an elite of footballers that is the main one affected by the overload of the calendar: international team players that every season they are in the Champions League and that year after year they are the ones that play the most games and have the least rest time.
(Breaking news. There will be an extension soon.)
