October 26 – The head of the European Clubs Association, Juventus President Andrea Agnelli, has voiced his opposition to Gianni Infantino’s game-changing proposals to change the face of world football.
In the hours leading up to today’s crucial FIFA Council meeting in Rwanda when members were due to vote on a new Global Nations League and a revamped, expanded Club World Cup, Agnelli described the relationship between European clubs and FIFA as tense and implied FIFA was jumping the gun with the two new competitions.
Infantino revealed his plans in May saying they were backed by a “solid and serious” group of investors willing to spend $25 billion over a 12-year cycle starting in 2021 but refusing to say who they were due to a non-disclosure agreement. There has been fierce opposition to the plan from domestic leagues and UEFA whose FIFA Council representatives apparently threatened to stage a walkout in Rwanda.
“FIFA is proposing new competitions, but we have to start from the base, that is the international calendar after 2024,” Agnelli told a Juventus shareholders’ meeting. “In this moment the relationship is tense.”
Speaking via the powerful Professional Football Strategic Council (PFSC), led by Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin, Uefa issued a statement in the build-up to today’s meeting expressing concern about the whole process.
It said the PFSC “unanimously expressed serious reservations about the process surrounding the FIFA Club World Cup and Global Nations League proposals and in particular the hasty timing and lack of concrete information”.
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