Premier League chief concerned by lack of consultation on Club World Cup decisions

Premier League chief executive Richard Masters has expressed his concern regarding the decisions being taken around the upcoming FIFA Club World Cup.

FIFA, world football’s governing body, is organising the tournament and Masters has said that domestic bodies, including leagues and its players’ unions, are “not happy with the decisions that are being taken at a global level”.

Manchester City and Chelsea are the two Premier League clubs involved in the tournament, with Masters saying that should either side go the distance to the Club World Cup final on July 13, it would create difficulty for their Premier League schedule.

Speaking in an interview for Sky Sports’ The Boardroom podcast, Masters said: “We’ve seen the Club World Cup come in, and obviously that is going to have an impact on the Premier League.

“If either Manchester City or Chelsea get to the final of that competition, the Premier League starts four weeks later, and all players are supposed to have three weeks off as part of the contractual commitment.

“So how does that work? With great difficulty I would say. We believe that if leagues and players’ unions were involved in the decision-making processes about how these competitions are put together, you’d have better outcomes. That’s what we’re calling for.”

The new 32-team Club World Cup will be held in the U.S. in June and July, with the majority of games taking place on the east coast while the Gold Cup takes place primarily on the west coast. Both competitions come ahead of the 2026 World Cup, which will be hosted across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Masters also said spoke of “overloading players on the number of matches they have to play” in a calendar year and said the situation was at “a tipping point”.

In October, Masters’ La Liga counterpart Javier Tebas called on FIFA to “scrap” the Club World Cup, claiming the expanded tournament is not wanted by broadcasters, clubs, players or sponsors.

When contacted by The Athletic, FIFA highlighted that the new men’s football’s match calendar — which runs from 2025 through to 2030 — was approved by relevant stakeholders across the sport. 

In January 2022, FIFA president Gianni Infantino met with the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) and global players’ union FIFPRO on the future of player welfare in Manchester.

In October 2024, Infantino posted a photo of himself on Instagram meeting David Aganzo, the president of the Spanish players’ union AFE, in Miami. Infantino included the caption saying that player welfare “remains a priority” for football’s governing body.

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However in that same month, players’ union FIFPRO teamed up with Europe’s top domestic leagues to lodge a formal complaint against world football’s governing body at the European Commission. And, in the summer of 2024, the union’s European branch started proceedings in a Belgian court over FIFA’s failure to consult the players’ representatives on the international match calendar.

Speaking at FIFA’s congress in Bangkok in December, Infantino refuted claims that FIFA had an undue influence over football’s calendar. “FIFA is organising around one per cent  of the games of the top clubs in the world – one per cent. When it comes to the national teams, it’s very, very similar.

“We increased the number of participants for the (FIFA) World Cup but still it’s one month every 48 months. And if you look at all the national team games around the world, we are still between one and two per cent of the matches which are organised by FIFA. All other matches — 98-99 per cent of the matches — are organised by the different leagues, associations, Confederations, by all of you, and that’s good. That is OK.

“But here comes the thing, with this one or two percent of matches that FIFA organises, FIFA is financing football all over the world. The revenues that we generate are not just going to a few clubs in one country.”

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 (Michael Regan/Getty Images)