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Football players are joining forces with top leagues to make a formal complaint to the European Commission against Fifa, piling pressure on the global governing body over the increasingly congested match calendar.
Players’ union Fifpro and European Leagues — a group that includes the English Premier League and Spain’s La Liga — said on Tuesday they had resolved to take legal action after Fifa “consistently refused” to include them “in its decision-making process”.
The groups also raised antitrust concerns, arguing that Fifa’s dual role as a regulator and competition organiser “creates a conflict of interest”.
“Fifa’s decisions over the last years have repeatedly favoured its own competitions and commercial interests, neglected its responsibilities as a governing body, and harmed the economic interests of national leagues and the welfare of players,” the two groups said.
The vow to file a formal complaint follows Fifa’s moves to expand the men’s World Cup from 32 teams to 48 in 2026, and to overhaul the Club World Cup, which will relaunch in the US next year as a 32-team contest. The much larger Club World Cup — seven teams competed in the last tournament in 2023 — is designed to boost Fifa’s income.
Domestic leagues view the expansion as a threat to their own competitions, while players complain that they are being pushed to their physical limits in pursuit of additional broadcast revenue for Fifa.
“The international match calendar is now beyond saturation and has become unsustainable for national leagues and a risk for the health of players,” Fifpro and European Leagues said on Tuesday. “Legal action is now the only responsible step.”
In response, Fifa said the match calendar was “unanimously approved” by the Fifa Council, which includes representatives from Europe, and followed “comprehensive and inclusive consultation” with unions and leagues. It added that domestic leagues were also adding to players’ burden, such as by organising longer overseas tours in the close season.
“Some leagues in Europe — themselves competition organisers and regulators — are acting with commercial self-interest, hypocrisy and without consideration to everyone else,” Fifa said on Tuesday.
The fight over the football calendar is the latest sign of sporting stakeholders turning to competition law to defend their interests.
Late last year the European Court of Justice ruled that Fifa and Uefa, the governing body of European football, had acted unlawfully in their handling of the European Super League, an aborted breakaway contest launched by elite clubs in 2021.
The ECJ also judged that the International Skating Union had breached European competition law when it threatened to punish athletes who wanted to compete in an unapproved competition in Dubai.
Last month, the Netherlands-based Fifpro submitted a legal claim at the Brussels Court of Commerce, accusing Fifa of “unilaterally” setting the international match calendar.
