War in world football! Leading European leagues take on Infantino and demand FIFA reforms

The conflict between European football authorities and FIFA has reached boiling point.

Details: The leadership of four leading European leagues — the English Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, Germany’s Bundesliga and Italy’s Serie A — has issued a strongly worded joint statement calling for sweeping changes. The top leagues have called for an entirely new governance structure for football’s global governing body — one that is transparent, objective, proportionate, inclusive and built on three fundamental principles:

• 1. Give stakeholders a meaningful role in decision-making.
• 2. Ensure decisions are based on factual evidence.
• 3. Protect FIFA’s regulatory role from its commercial function.

The collective criticism was aimed squarely at the organisation’s president, Gianni Infantino. The statement stresses that in recent years, the fundamental foundations of the game have come under serious threat because of a flawed governance system. As a result, the FIFA president has actively pushed commercial initiatives based on the overt exploitation of football and its players, rather than protecting them from overload and crisis.

It is worth noting that the open confrontation between Europe’s leagues, players’ unions and FIFA has rapidly intensified amid an overloaded international calendar, the introduction of new club competitions and the international federation’s refusal to take national leagues’ views into account when shaping the global schedule.

Reminder: Another major scandal rocks world football! Gianni Infantino backed into a corner over secret deals surrounding the World Cup