It is the week in which Manchester City begins a new assault on the Champions League against the backdrop of a legal battle with the Premier League. Yet Rodri, the club’s star midfielder, managed to steer the conversation in an unexpected direction on Tuesday.
A question about the increasing demands placed on Europe’s elite players produced a sharp response. “We are close to strike action,” Rodri told reporters at a press conference previewing City’s clash with Inter Milan. “It is the general opinion of the players and if this continues, we will have no other choice.”
The debate over the football calendar continued, but Rodri’s words felt like an important moment. One of the Premier League’s most gifted stars, a leading candidate for the Ballon d’Or award next month, was keen to say that industrial action has become a consideration for him and his colleagues.
A genuine threat or an idle bluff? The Athletics assesses how realistic a player’s strike can be in the ongoing battle to be listened to.
Why are players like Rodri angry?
Football players, at least at the height of the sport, believe that too much is now being asked of them. Expanded competitions have reduced the likelihood of rest and see established international stars regularly breach the 55-match-per-season threshold recommended by FIFPro, the global players’ union.
This season has only increased the doubts. A new format in the UEFA Champions League will add two more group matches to a participating club’s schedule and this summer FIFA will launch its new Club World Cup between June 15 and July 13.
The 2024/25 season started with Rodri and his Manchester City teammates theoretically facing a whopping 75 games for club and country. “It’s too much,” Rodri said on Tuesday. “Not everything is about money or marketing. It’s about the quality that is shown. When I’m not tired, I perform better.”
Rodri pointed out the nuclear button in the players’ arsenal in a few short sentences. There has long been a belief that their views are not being heard, a feeling entrenched in the creeping expansions overseen by both UEFA and FIFA. Pre- and end-of-season tours that involve extensive travel are also an uncomfortable norm for players to accept.
Rodri made 50 starts in six competitions for Manchester City last season (Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)
However, the past six months have produced an orchestrated response.
Two of Europe’s largest players’ unions, England’s Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) and France’s Union Nationale des Footballeurs Professionnels, launched legal action against FIFA in June, challenging the legality of the governing body that governs international football. unilaterally”. competition calendar.
A month later, the European Leagues, which represent professional football in thirty European countries, including the Premier League, together with La Liga and FIFPro Europe, filed a formal complaint against FIFA with the European Commission.
The new Club World Cup, FIFPro said, was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” and deep battle lines have now been drawn, with players at the heart of the battle. Enough, they argue, is enough.
How would a strike work in practice?
Rodri is said to have suggested that the strike was ‘close’, but it is still quite a few stops away from the train at that point. This should be coordinated through the PFA or FIFPro and would be considered a last resort if all stakeholder negotiations fail.
The PFA, as the only players’ union in English football, would theoretically have to ask its membership of almost 5,000 members whether they support a strike, which would require a majority vote to go ahead.
All affected competitions, whether organized by the Premier League, English Football League, Football Association, UEFA or FIFA, would also have the option to take retaliatory legal action to block planned strikes.
“We have really made an effort to engage with relevant stakeholders,” said Maheta Molango, CEO of the PFA. The Athletic FC Podcast last week. “So we did our best to find a diplomatic solution – legal action is always a defeat for everyone.
“But sometimes, when mature people can’t come to a solution, you have to let a third party decide for you.”
PFA CEO Maheta Molango (Steven Paston/PA Images via Getty Images)
Has this ever happened before in English football?
Go back to November 2001 and there was a very real danger that English football’s biggest names would down their instruments. The PFA had grown tired of negotiations with the Premier League, which wanted the traditional cut in domestic broadcast contracts sent to the union to be reduced from five percent to two percent.
Three months of discussions had passed without an agreement being reached, leading to a strike vote. Ninety-nine percent of players were in favor of boycotting televised matches. A date for strike action was even set – December 1. PFA chief Gordon Taylor claimed Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson and players including Roy Keane, Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs supported their position.
There were legal threats and injunctions, but the strike was eventually averted after eight hours of discussions between the Premier League and PFA in Manchester. Taylor didn’t get everything he wanted, but the offer of £17.5 million ($23 million at current rates) was ultimately deemed satisfactory.
Gordon Taylor announced in 2001 that more than 99 percent of PFA members had voted in favor of strike action (Phil Noble – PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)
And if you delve further into the history of English football, all the way back to 1960, you come to a much more important moment. The PFA, with Jimmy Hill as standard bearer, attempted to abolish the £20 per week wage cap for players and relied on the threat of strike action to eventually force the FA and Football League to give in in 1961.
What about other countries or other sports?
Industrial action is much more common in the US, where the power of players’ unions is felt with greater force.
The National Basketball Association (NBA) suffered three lockouts in the second half of the 1990s and another, which lasted five months, in 2011. That was the same year the National Football League (NFL) initiated its own lockouts when players and owners failed to agree on a revised collective bargaining agreement.
Major League Baseball did not face a lockout until 2022, the ninth in the organization’s history. And then there’s the National Hockey League (NHL), another well-versed in tense negotiations, player power and unblinking owners.
However, comparisons with European football carry little weight. An elite player in England will take part in matches organized by the Premier League, EFL, FA, UEFA and FIFA in a season and the presence of multiple stakeholders will always complicate negotiations over the welfare of a union’s members.
Which leagues could be vulnerable to a players’ strike?
That is the big unknown, but what we can be sure of is the strength of the current relationship between the PFA and the Premier League. Although the two were at odds 23 years ago, with Taylor at odds with Richard Scudamore, the two have become closely aligned in recent times. Don’t see it as a coincidence that the PFA launched one lawsuit against FIFA in the same summer months in which the Premier League helped form a separate lawsuit.
The PFA – and, by extension, FIFPro – has no problem with domestic programs, which remain largely unchanged. There is also sympathy for the FA and the EFL, whose competitions have become so depressed in the modern era that reforms need to be made. It therefore seems unlikely that a strike threat would have such a target.
Relations between the PFA and UEFA are more harmonious given the sense of greater consultation, so could the sights fall on FIFA instead?
FIFA sets the international calendar and is the focus of much anger following the introduction of a new Club World Cup. The defense may be well-versed and robust, pointing out that the games it organizes take on a fraction of a player’s workload, but the unions have made their dissatisfaction clear.
The Club World Cup is also the competition that has struggled to secure broadcast and sponsorship deals before next summer. It feels like the softest target for players who want to express their feelings.
GO DEEPER
Another year until the Club World Cup in the United States: what’s going on?
How likely is a strike?
The easiest move would be to dismiss Rodri’s comments as hot air, but the concerns are too deep-seated. Without meaningful changes to the calendar, the unions insist, there will come a time when players will take a stand.
However, what that will look like and when that will happen are questions that are not easy to answer. The workload issues leave multiple stakeholders wanting more and the next challenge will be how to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
The players’ unions ultimately want a more prominent place at the board table. That’s why they took legal action against FIFA; an attempt to make their voices heard and reduce the demands placed on its members.
The first case against FIFA filed at the Court of Commerce in Brussels in June will likely end up at the European Court of Justice sometime next year and the final decision will determine where all parties go. The players’ unions will hope this will mean a dilution of FIFA’s powers responsible for the international fixture list, leading to long-term reforms.
Strike action, regardless of its likelihood, would remain problematic. It’s worth ending with a comment from Stephen Taylor-Heath, head of sports law at JMW Solicitors, who spoke to The Athletics in June.
“It’s really about employment law issues between players and clubs,” he said. “There has always been an uneasy alignment between labor law and football.”
And maybe it will also become a little less simple.
(Top photo: Getty Images. design: Dan Goldfarb)
