🚨 Europe’s four major leagues call for FIFA reform

🚨 Europe’s four major leagues call for FIFA reform Another blow to Gianni Infantino. A major statement was jointly released by Europe’s four biggest leagues this Friday morning! The Premier League, Serie A, La Liga and the Bundesliga have indeed taken a joint stance this Friday morning and are calling for FIFA reform, just months ahead of the next elections. In the crosshairs: Gianni Infantino and his stillborn controversial plan to commercialize the World Cup, called FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), which aimed to open up FIFA’s commercial activities to private investors. The full statement:  "The World Cup may be the pinnacle of our sport, but the foundations of football are sustained week after week, in packed stadiums and within local communities, thanks to the commitment of players, supporters, clubs and leagues around the world. These long-standing foundations of football have been threatened in recent years by a fundamental governance problem: the FIFA president has actively promoted exploitative ideas instead of resisting them. And although football stakeholders ultimately forced the withdrawal of the ‘FIFA Forward Enterprise’ (FFE) programme, the conditions that led to the creation of FFE remain. The FIFA president has now acknowledged the need for reform, but it is not enough to consider superficial procedural changes in the aftermath of FFE: fundamental governance reform is essential to restore clear statutory limits within FIFA, including certainty that individual disciplinary matters remain clearly protected from any political interference. The future of FIFA matters to everyone who cares about football, because our sport cannot grow globally if its foundations are shaken. FIFA’s governance problem goes far beyond the role of any one individual. The broader issue is whether the FIFA president should simultaneously exercise such regulatory, commercial and political power without effective checks and balances, including without the agreement of the stakeholders concerned. More than a decade ago, following criminal prosecutions involving senior football officials, the reform process launched by FIFA itself was meant to address these issues – yet once again, football has been subjected to one of the most serious abuses of power in FIFA’s history. We are speaking out together, as founding members of European Leagues and the World Leagues Association, because we understand how FIFA’s relentless expansionism affects everyone. Each of us is the guardian of a professional system that links the grassroots of our sport to elite domestic and international competitions. By bringing millions of people together, domestic football leagues around the world have a major social and economic impact: they support industries, create jobs and invest in grassroots development, while also generating significant tax revenue for our communities. About 1% of professional players worldwide take part in the FIFA World Cup, while all other players and their clubs stop playing matches when domestic leagues are suspended. Yet when FIFA makes major unilateral decisions that directly affect us – for example, by expanding the International Match Calendar (IMC) and extending the periods during which domestic competitions must be suspended – the stakeholders most affected are not meaningfully involved in the decision-making process. A FIFA governance model that concentrates unchecked regulatory, commercial and political power in a single office, while relegating affected stakeholders to a merely consultative role, is not fit for purpose. In recent years, international case law has repeatedly underlined this same point: sports governing bodies may regulate our discipline, but their power is not unlimited. When FIFA seeks to organize competitions, it must also neutralize any inherent conflict of interest through transparent, objective, non-discriminatory and proportionate rules and criteria, adopted inclusively and subject to effective independent oversight. The complaint lodged by the leagues with the European Commission in October 2024 regarding the IMC stems from a flawed governance framework, in which FIFA can use its regulatory power to serve its own commercial objectives without regard for the impact on the economic and social sustainability of domestic competitions, which affects all stakeholders. This must change now, for the good of football. We therefore jointly call for a new governance structure for the global governing body of our sport, one that is transparent, objective, proportionate and inclusive, and that is based on three fundamental commitments. We call on FIFA to: 1. Give affected stakeholders a genuine role in decision-making FIFA must establish a permanent body representing the key stakeholders, including national associations, leagues, clubs, and male and female football players. This new body must be fully informed of new initiatives and play a meaningful role in FIFA’s decision-making process. The agreement of stakeholder groups directly affected by a decision must be required for decisions concerning, among other things, the calendar, employment, competitions and football’s core assets. 2. Ensure evidence-based decision-making Any major FIFA proposal must be supported by a clearly defined rationale, supporting evidence and an independent assessment, published before any decision is made, covering players, clubs, leagues and supporters, and assessing the impact on all stakeholders as well as on the development of football. Different options must be thoroughly examined and final decisions must be accompanied by publicly available explanations. 3. Separate FIFA’s role as regulator from its commercial function FIFA’s role as football’s regulator and guardian must be protected from its commercial function, as organizer of global competitions, by strong institutional safeguards designed to preserve trust, legitimacy and accountability. The bodies responsible for ethics, financial oversight and elections must have appointments, budgets and powers that are genuinely independent from FIFA’s administration and presidency. These reforms will ensure that FIFA’s core competition rights, including the World Cup, are managed in the interests of football as a whole. At this crucial time for our sport, we encourage candidates for the FIFA presidency to commit to these principles and, within the first 100 days of the next presidential term, to convene a Governance Convention chaired by an independent figure representing the member associations and the wider football community, tasked with publicly reporting on its work within six months. All candidates for the FIFA presidency should publish their own reform programme, debate its contents and comply with fair electoral rules. FIFA’s financial, legal, communications and marketing resources, as well as its football development funds, must remain strictly neutral and must never provide an electoral advantage to any candidate. We invite confederations, national associations, leagues, clubs, players’ unions, supporters’ groups and public authorities from all continents to join this cause by supporting these principles. The time has come to decide not only who will lead FIFA, but also how it should be led. Leagues have a crucial role to play in this process, and we want to ensure that every one of them is heard. Football needs a strong FIFA. But that strength must go hand in hand with accountability. FIFA’s authority can only stem from shared responsibility, acceptance of rigorous oversight and earned trust." This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇫🇷 here.