Days after Carlo Ancelotti stated that Real Madrid would not be attending the Club World Cup in 2025 – declarations that he and Real Madrid quickly backtracked on – the player’s union have taken legal action against the organising body, FIFA.

The revamped competition would contain 32 teams from across the globe, including 12 from Europe. It would begin on the 15th of June and end a month later, leaving less than a month until the start of the new season for the winners.

FIFPro had warned FIFA that they would consider action if they did not undertake reforms, something FIFA categorically refused. As reported by ESPN, the PFA in England and the UNFP in France, FIFPro’s member organisations in those states, have challenged the legality of FIFA’s right to form the international match calendar and schedule the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 unilaterally.

They said that “Player unions believe that these decisions violate the rights of players and their unions under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights while also potentially violating EU competition law.”

The statement would go on to call the calendar ‘beyond saturation’, but FIFA have rejected the notion that it shifted the calendar in order to benefit its competitions.

Players have been speaking out about the calendar in the past year, the most loud being Toni Kroos and Thibaut Courtois, the latter of course suffering a major injury at the start of this season. Over the past season, not a single Clasico featured both teams with their best teams fully available, and the same was the case the season before.

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