Serie A doesn’t agree and bangs its fists on the table, joining the protest that is being raised loudly regarding the excessive number of matches on the football calendar and which has FIFA at the center of the sights. The organizing body and manager of the top championship in Italy has in fact joined forces with the main other major European tournaments and with the footballers’ union, FifPro, with a complaint against FIFA.
In the press release released by Lega Serie A, you can read: “1. The complaint to the European Commission on the match calendar reports how the conflict of interest of FIFA as a competition organizer and governing body at the same time, combined with a lack of meaningful engagement with stakeholders, violates European Union competition law. 2. The complaint focuses on the international men’s match calendarincluding the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup and the 2026 FIFA World Cup. 3. The excessive saturation of the international football calendar puts the safety and well-being of footballers at risk and threatens the economic and social sustainability of important national competitions, enjoyed for generations by fans in Europe and around the world. FIFPRO Europe and the European Leagues, representing footballers’ unions and European national leagues, together with LaLiga, today lodged a complaint with the European Commission against FIFA for its conduct regarding the imposition of the international match calendar, including decisions relating to the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup.”
The CEO of Lega Serie A, Luigi De Siervothen added: “Serie A, like almost all other European Championships, has not increased the number of matches over the last 20 years. On the contrary, FIFA and UEFA, cycle after cycle, have constantly increased the size of their competitions both for Clubs and national teams and we have now reached a saturation point in the calendar. The problem of calendar overload is not caused by League competitions, but by FIFA, with its new format and duration of tournaments, and by UEFA with the Nations League and the new UEFA club competitions, with a greater number of dates and matches.”