With a statement released on the official website, the Italian Footballers’ Association has lodged an appeal against FIFA regarding the calendar of international matches. This is the text: “On 13 June 2024, in a legal challenge coordinated by FIFPRO Europe, the English footballers’ union, PFA, and the French footballers’ union, UNFP, initiated legal action against FIFA, challenging the legitimacy of the FIFA’s decisions to unilaterally set the calendar of international matches and, in particular, the decision to create and schedule the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup.
The players’ unions believe that this decision violates the rights of footballers and their unions under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and EU competition law.
Footballers and their unions have consistently highlighted that the current football calendar is overloaded and unworkable.
The Italian footballers’ union, AIC, has decided to join this legal challenge against FIFA at the Brussels Commercial Court.
Indeed, AIC members, who play in Italian clubs, face the same impassable reality as their French and English colleagues: this issue is, by its nature, pan-European and even global.
In the proceedings at the Brussels Commercial Court, as the original appellants, the AIC asks the Belgian judge to refer the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) with 4 questions for a preliminary ruling.”
