The head of Real Madrid criticized FIFA and UEFA for causing dangerous damage to the health of players, in addition to disrespecting fans. Florentino Perez believes that FIFA and UEFA are attacking the fairness of the global football schedule.
Perez believes that the new versions of the UEFA Champions League and FIFA Club World Cup pose a danger to the well-being of football stars. Real Madrid will be one of the "victims" of the FIFA Club World Cup next year. The tournament consists of 32 teams and will start from June 15, just 3 weeks after the end of the last round of La Liga.
"The tight schedule affects the health of the players, specifically the continuous injuries. UEFA and FIFA arbitrarily add 14 more matches to each of their tournaments. The players will need about 2 and a half more months to complete this volume. This season, we have played 14 matches in La Liga and have had 22 injuries of all kinds" - Perez shared.
When criticizing FIFA and UEFA, Perez cited the FIFPro Global Professional Players Association. There are many statistics on the unprecedented competition situation pointed out by FIFPro, mostly due to overloaded competition. FIFPro itself has filed a complaint with the European Commission (EC) against FIFA for issuing unreasonable match schedules.
"Our Real Madrid have suffered 7 ACL injuries in the past 12 months. When consulting the doctors, the club received the answer that it was mostly due to fatigue. This year, the competition schedule is denser than ever. It is unbelievable that Jude Bellingham has played 251 matches. At his age, David Beckham has only played 51 matches" - Perez shared.
On FIFA's side, the organization believes that there is no scientific evidence that playing too much will easily lead to ACL injuries. In parallel with organizing the new version of the Club World Cup, FIFA is also actively adding recommendations and scientific methods to help players protect their health.
In addition to criticizing that having to play at a high frequency will harm the health of players, Perez also said that FIFA and UEFA are directly reducing the quality of matches. The Bernabeu head also said FIFA and UEFA are disrespecting fans.
"FIFA created a new version of the Club World Cup to take away the players' post-season break. As for UEFA, 10 years ago, their official matches were only 488, now it has increased to 769. All this is for money.
The new version of the Champions League has proven that it is not a good solution to improve the tournament, as I predicted. It only increases in quantity but not in quality. Tournaments like this only attract fans in the final matches but not the entire tournament" - Perez was upset.
On FIFA's side, the head of the association, Gianni Infantino, shared that the federation only participates in organizing about 1% of the number of matches involving big teams like Real Madrid. FIFA's argument is that expanding club-level tournaments is to create more playgrounds for weaker teams. If big teams participate, it will not take too much time as FIFPro or Perez have criticized over the past time.
