July 28 – FIFA has returned fire in its war against players’ union FIFPro criticising what it says is the “increasingly divisive and contradictory tone adopted by FIFPRO leadership”. While calling for a return to the negotiating table, the FIFA statement will likely only escalate the conflict – perhaps the statement’s only objective as FIFA bids to break the unions.
Echoing what a lot of stakeholders in Europe and beyond have whispered in the corridors of power without ever going on record, the world players union has singled out FIFA’s governance as “autocratic” after a meeting with 58 national player unions.
In a strong statement, FIFPro wrote that the rights of mens and women’s players were “being seriously undermined by commercial policies imposed by its [FIFA] autocratic system of governance.”
“The overloaded match calendar, the lack of adequate physical and mental recovery periods, extreme playing conditions, the absence of meaningful dialogue, and the ongoing disregard for players’ social rights have regrettably become pillars of FIFA’s business model; this is a model that puts the health of players at risk and sidelines those at the heart of the game.”
FIFPro said that “football needs responsible leadership, not emperors.”
The union reiterated criticism of the Club World Cup and said that FIFA “continues to systematically ignore and silence the real issues players face in different parts of the world.”
Last year, FIFPro and its European division launched a complaint over the Club World Cup and its consequences for the congested match calendar at the European commission. FIFPro have long said that Zurich never properly consulted the union. During the Club World Cup, FIFA escalated the conflict, staging a meeting about player welfare without inviting FIFPro. Infantino and the FIFA administration said down with unofficial player representatives and claimed a consensus on key matters.
FIFPro’s general secretary Alex Phillips said: “Pretty much everyone interpreted this meeting and photo [of the attendees] as an attack on Fifpro. It’s clearly understood this is an effort to try to create a problem within Fifpro.”
The player unions of Spain, Mexico, Switzerland and Kyrgyzstan did attend the New York meeting, but FIFPro shunned the quartet for their own recent meeting in the Netherlands. Philips said that FIFA had tried to get more unions on their side.
The world governing body responded with a lengthy statement: “FIFA is extremely disappointed by the increasingly divisive and contradictory tone adopted by FIFPRO leadership as this approach clearly shows that rather than engaging in constructive dialogue, FIFPRO has chosen to pursue a path of public confrontation driven by artificial PR battles – which have nothing to do with protecting the welfare of professional players but rather aim to preserve their own personal positions and interests.
It added: “FIFPRO, regrettably, has consistently refused to engage constructively in these efforts.”
Boldly, FIFA called on FIFPro to publish their annual accounts, including all their sources of income. “As FIFPRO is interested in addressing matters such as good governance, maybe they would want to consider publishing their own statutes and releasing transparent annual accounts, to ensure that what is being preached is also being practiced,” said FIFA. “Let us be clear: you cannot preach transparency while operating in opacity.”
This is akin to the pot calling the kettle black as FIFA’s own annual accounts fail to provide granular detail.
FIFA listed a number of initiatives it says it had brought in to support players but which it says FIFPro fails to acknowledge.
“This approach reveals a lot about FIFPRO priorities. It suggests that their leadership does not really care about the players, but rather about internal political fights and their image. FIFA’s proposed reforms are about impacting genuine change to support players and are far more important than preserving FIFPRO’s perceived image.
“FIFPRO, regrettably, has consistently refused to engage constructively in these efforts. Instead of contributing meaningfully, they have opted for theatrical denunciations, prioritising media headlines over measurable progress for the players they claim to represent.”
Despite FIFA’s rhetoric, the reality is that the world governing body has not invited the players’ union at any point to be a participating stakeholder in key discussions like the international calendar or player workload.
As well as challenging FIFPRO to publish its statutes FIFA also called for FIFPro to publish “their full financial reports (including all their sources of income, the detailed intellectual property rights of the players they claim to own, and the funding one of their regional divisions receives from some football organisations), and the full list of individual members they claim to represent.”
The funding request is perhaps relevant but suggesting that FIFPro doesn’t represent the players it says it does is bizarre.
It perhaps reflects the wider divide and conquer political strategy of FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino who has grown ever closer to the world’s right wing and authoritarian despots and increasingly further away from the world of football that he is supposed to represent.
The political strategy of breaking the workers’ unions (in this case the players’ union) to take unbridled control of the business economics is one that has seen used in other sectors in pretty much every country of the world for more than 100 years, sometimes successfully.
In its mission to exclude and break FIFPro, FIFA may have overplayed its hand.
The world’s top players that FIFA needs to make its competitions meaningful are, for the most part, do not earn their income playing in FIFA competitions, but are employed and paid by their clubs. If the players – as they themselves suggested before the Club World Cup – withdrew their labour from FIFA competitions, FIFA would be left with a barely marketable product.
“The game deserves unity, not division. Players deserve action, not rhetoric,” said the FIFA statement.
“FIFA will move forward together with players and those who really want the best for football. It is up to FIFPRO to answer this call.”
It is not clear what ‘this call’ is? If FIFA truly want to engage with the largest players’ union in the world then surely they would have invited them to the stakeholders table.
The question FIFA needs to ask itself is how close is it to losing the dressing room completely.
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1753710336labto1753710336ofdlr1753710336owedi1753710336sni@i1753710336tnuk.1753710336ardni1753710336mas1753710336, or moc.l1753710336labto1753710336ofdlr1753710336owedi1753710336sni@n1753710336osloh1753710336cin.l1753710336uap1753710336
Source link
Add Comment