Legal complaint filed against Fifa's 'abuse of dominance'
One of the claims levelled at Fifa is that it did not have a proper consultation process before expanding the football calendar.
World football's governing body has insisted Fifpro and the World League Association were consulted about changes to the overall 2025-30 international match calendar, including the 2025 Club World Cup.
Fifa says, external it has no intention of altering next year's Club World Cup, saying it is "fully within our rights to set the parameters of our competitions whilst respecting the regulatory framework in place".
Fifa has also accused some leagues of "hypocrisy" and acting "without consideration to everyone else in the world".
"Those leagues apparently prefer a calendar filled with friendlies and summer tours, often involving extensive global travel," said Fifa.
"By contrast, Fifa must protect the overall interests of world football, including the protection of players, everywhere and at all levels of the game."
Following the end of the last Premier League campaign on 19 May, Newcastle United and Tottenham flew to Australia for an end-of-season friendly at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Premier League clubs also took part in pre-season games across the US and in Tokyo last summer.
A recent study by the CIES Football Observatory,, external - a research group at the International Centre for Sports Studies - on schedules and player workload suggested that clubs are not playing more matches per season.
Its report found that between 2012 and 2024, the average number of fixtures per club and season sat at just over 40, with about 5% of clubs playing 60 or more games per season.
No significant change was observed in the proportion of clubs playing 60 or more matches.
Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin has conceded "the match calendar has reached full capacity" but also believes complaints over the issue are from a minority of players.
"The impact is very different among clubs and players. Some are over-burdened. The others have spare capacity," he said.
"In fairness to those who are stretched, I stand by what I said two months ago, there is no room for additional matches. But I have to add this, who is complaining? The ones who have the highest salaries and the ones [clubs] with 25 top players.
"The ones with lower salaries and hardly 11 players are not complaining. They love to play."
