Rules around player workload must be part of the agreement on Champions League reform, according to world players’ union FIFPRO.
European football’s clubs and leagues, along with UEFA, seem to have reached a consensus that a ‘Swiss system’ should replace the existing group phase from 2024, but disagree over how many extra matches that should involve.
FIFPRO, which looks after the interests of male and female professional players across the globe and has been part of the talks on the future of European club competitions, says the calendar itself is not its biggest concern.
It wants a framework to be put in place to protect individual players from excessive workloads.
“The leagues are trying to negotiate a smaller increase in the number of games, but that doesn’t resolve our problem,” FIFPRO general secretary Jonas Baer-Hoffmann told the PA news agency.
“What we have stated for some time now is that any increase in the number of games, without putting in a protective framework for the health of the players, is something we wouldn’t support.”
Baer-Hoffmann says the framework must cover such issues as the duration of off-season breaks, in-season breaks, rest days after international windows and so on.
“These kind of elements which manage load on an individual basis mean you don’t necessarily have to play less games, you have to spread the number of games amongst more players so that every individual player is taken care of better,” he said.
European football’s governing body UEFA hopes to strike an agreement over the format before talks on how revenues are distributed.
FIFPRO’s recently-published Shaping Our Future report found two-thirds of players around the world suffer at the hands of instability in the football market they play in, often resulting in unpaid wages.
It wants a player hardship fund to form part of the new financial agreement.
“Any contribution an international tournament can make in the form of a fund to help players who are really living through hardship and are not making substantial salaries to start with, if that is something we could support, that would be very important to do,” Baer-Hoffmann said.
“We are having solidarity considerations to clubs and national federations, usually that money doesn’t benefit those players.
“So why not direct some of the money to this group who are really hard-hit by some of the governance inadequacies that exist among clubs and national federations?”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here