The Club World Cup to 32 teams, the first edition of which will be played in the United States in 2025 and will also see Inter And Juventus protagonists, it will not be very easy to organize for the FIFA. As revealed by Times in fact, the international players’ union, Fifpro and the World Leagues organization are threatening legal action should plans to hold the tournament continue. The request that has been made by the two organizations is that the competition be rescheduled and, in order for this to happen, they have sent a joint letter to FIFA stating that they have taken legal advice.
FIFA’s new match calendar they claim is causing “economic damage” to domestic leagues and is posing a “significant risk of injury” to players. The accusation is that FIFA is thinking of its own commercial interests. The letter asks the FIFA Council, at its meeting in Bangkok next week, to reschedule the competition and reopen discussions on the international match calendar.
The format of the Club World Cup includes 3 matches in the group stage and up to 4 in the direct elimination stage. The tournament will begin two weeks after the Champions League final and will last from 15 June to 13 July. Among other things, a television partner is still missing, which could be Apple with an outlay of around a billion dollars. The old competition will not disappear, but will remain on an annual basis and will be renamed the Intercontinental Cup. Fifpro and the World Leagues are calling for that tournament to be eliminated.
The letter, also sent to Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, reads that “if FIFA refuses to formally commit to resolving the issues at its next council, we will be forced to advise our members of the options available to them, both individually and collectively , to proactively protect their interests. These options include legal action against FIFA, on which we have now commissioned external legal advice. […] FIFA has continually and consistently made unilateral decisions that benefit its own competitions and commercial interests, while negatively harming national leagues and players. For a significant period, FIFA ignored repeated attempts by leagues and unions to address this issue.”
