In a speech at the Forum of Europe in Madrid on Monday, the president of the Spanish league, Javier Tebas, was keen to warn of the dramatic situation in football today, with the shadow of the players’ strike hanging over European football in particular: “A football strike can be real. The unions and the leagues are quite united. We cannot continue with new competitions as they are being done. They endanger the health of some players and the ecosystem of the vast majority of players. The risk is latent, close and even more so with the obligations of the competitions without thinking about what happens with the effects of the football industry. This situation creates differences in the national leagues between those who earn the most and those who earn the least and competitive differences that gradually lead to the economic death of the national football leagues” he said.
After conversations with the international union (FIFPRO), Javier Tebas showed some pessimism about the future of football: “The revenues will move from the national competitions to these super competitions, they will go to a series of clubs that will provide them to their players; the industry will have fewer jobs and the small medium-sized clubs will lose money. With the recent format of the Champions League, we already see that in some countries the league rights are losing money. In Spain they have been maintained, but these super competition formats are damaging the industry. I do not agree on certain things with UEFA and FIFA, they set the schedule, they call you, they ask you and you say I do not agree and they say: ‘okay, see you later.’ The judgment says that in this monopoly position, they must agree with the other players in football“, he said, also mentioning the dangers of piracy.
