FIFPRO’s Jonas Baer-Hoffmann Raises The Alarm Bell Over Player Workload Yet Again, Questions Human Rights Legacy Of The World Cup.

At which point does an athlete’s body break? Heung-Min Son is a global star, respected and adored in huge parts of Asia and beyond. He plays for Tottenham and then some more for South Korea. This season alone, he travelled more than 146,000 kilometres crossing a combined 132 time zones. Real Madrid’s Vinicius Junior, 21, has played 72% of his minutes in back-to-back matches. Of the 32 World Cup finalists, Brazil’s Seleçao has the highest workload on combined minutes.

In a newly published report, FIFPRO, soccer’s world players union, highlights that these are consequences of the extreme calendar imbalance and dangerous lack of preparation and recovery time. On Sunday, Qatar kicks off the World Cup, but a lot of players will not get a break after the tournament. They will fly straight back to their clubs and run a greater risk of injuries, compelling FIFPRO to once again raise the alarm bell over players’ health. At the last World Cup in 2018, there were 32 days between the last PremierPINC
League match and the World Cup’s curtain raiser as well as 26 days between the World Cup final and the Premier League kick-off. This year, that preparation and recovery time stand at 7 and 8 days.

“In the dressing rooms in the top leagues, this is probably the number one topic players talk about,” FIFPRO’s general-secretary Jonas Baer-Hoffmann told me. “This year has not only suppressed the World Cup preparation period and the post-World Cup recovery period, but it has also compressed the season schedules for the elite players and the elite leagues for the last six or even 18 months; and it will do so again in the following six to 18 months. We cannot change this schedule anymore, but the calendar and the protective regulations need to be renegotiated urgently.”

In spite of the Covid-19 pandemic, the soccer industry remains indifferent to player welfare: the Champions League will introduce an expanded format with more matches, the World Cup will feature 48 teams in 2026 and clubs insist on pre-season tours in far-flung cities to increase commercial revenue. ‘Less is more’ doesn’t resonate in soccer.

So what’s the solution? There is none unless all the stakeholders, led by world federation FIFA, come together to negotiate a compromise acceptable to all. “The challenge that we have in soccer compared to US sports is obviously that we have a much more fragmented calendar with many different tournaments organized by different organizations who are all in many ways competing with each other for match days and broadcasting slots,” explains Baer-Hoffmann.

However, there is an increasing awareness among clubs, leagues, and federations that the current, congested calendar is untenable and that it’s not only just about balancing the commercial interests of competitions in the calendar, according to Baer-Hoffmann at least. He says: “We’re now no longer arguing whether it is a problem, but we’re negotiating about the kinds of measures that are necessary to protect the players appropriately. The reality is that it will have to be a mixture of collective and individual measures: mandatory offseason breaks of a minimum duration, and mandatory midseason of a minimum duration, accompanied by individual measures of how you manage every individual player’s load throughout the season.”

FIFA’s calendar reform proposals included a mandatory offseason break of a minimum duration, but those plans were largely contingent on Gianni Infantino’s silly wish for a biennial World Cup, an idea that received almost as much backlash as the World Cup in Qatar.

Bruno Fernandes and Christian Eriksen spoke up about the human rights issues in Qatar in spite of Infantino’s – by now infamous – letter to the 32 World Cup participants demanding not to drag soccer into political and ideological battles. Infantino wants to muzzle dissenting voices, but he can’t have it both ways. The FIFA president jetted off to the G-20 in Indonesia to do exactly what he had asked others to refrain from – play politics, by calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine during the World Cup.

“The players didn’t ever vote – past, present or future – as to where the World Cup will take place. So when it’s about criticizing where the World Cup is taking place [the criticism] should be targeted towards the federations’ executives and officials who make the decisions. No pressure should be put on the players,” argues Baer-Hoffmann. “At the same time, the players as human beings enjoy freedom of speech. They should in principle be allowed to express their opinions, especially in a situation like this when we’re not talking about a political issue, we’re talking about a human rights issue.”

“Human rights are universal, they should apply to everybody, and they should apply equally. And in that sense, it shouldn’t be made into a political matter. It is a human rights issue that supersedes those kinds of considerations.”

Ever since FIFA awarded the World Cup hosting rights to Qatar, the country has been buffeted by severe criticism. Above all, Qatar’s treatment of migrant workers, who helped build World Cup stadiums and infrastructure remains deeply problematic. FIFA and Qatar claim that worker welfare has improved since the Gulf Nation abolished the Kafala system in 2017. Human Rights Watch and other NGOs argue these are merely paper reforms.

“It has been quite frustrating when you work directly with the people on the ground to see that – by far – not enough has been achieved. We’re not certain yet that the legacy of this World Cup will actually be a lasting and positive one, from a human rights point of view. For me, there is no reason why human rights considerations in particular, shouldn’t get a much stronger emphasis in the entry process of a bidding procedure.”