The drop of water that overflows the vase? From the UNFP point of view, the players' union, certainly. While the attackers of PSG Désiré Doué and Ousmane Dembélé had to leave the gathering of the French team, injured in a thigh and a calf respectively during the match of the 2026 World Cup qualifiers against Ukraine, Friday evening, the infernal cadence of footballers is again debated.
In a statement published this Sunday, the National Union of Professional Footballers is once again attacking FIFA and its dementia calendars. Particularly in this 2025-2026 exercise supervised by a club World Cup and a World Cup. The parent house of the round ball is openly accused of jeopardizing the physical and mental health of the players.
FIFA taken to part
“” Here we are! The qualification matches at the next World Cup in recent days, unfortunately saw the players fall as in Gravelotte, Désiré Doué and Ousmane Dembélé having not been the only onesthus deplores the UNFP. If, here and there, the awareness, very late, feed today press and social networks, they do not question the substance of the problem – an disrespectful international calendar, dangerous both for physical health and mental players – since no one dares to believe that FIFA will make, in the short term, rear machine – it will be necessary, however! -, and that no one, outside of players' representatives, wishes to face the International Federation, especially after having left it to act as he pleases … »»
The president of the union aroused and the FIFPro Europe, David Terrier, is sounding the alarm bell: ” It is therefore all advisable together to set up new rules, new regulations, another process, to still succeed in protecting players, especially since we are only at the beginning of a season, punctuated by the World Cup, where the number of injured will inexorably follow the accumulation of matches, both in club and selection. »»
The State placed before its responsibilities
The UNFP therefore seized the European Committee for Social Rights on July 1. This in order to ” oblige the French State to respect the European social charter due to unreasonable working time and the insufficiency of periods of rest and leave for professional footballers evolving in France ».
“” We ask the State to intervene since it is impossible, despite numerous communications, actions and deposits of complaints, to make FIFA hear reason for FIFA so that, on the basis of a real social dialogue that it refuses to set up in defiance of the health of the players, it revises with all the stakeholders its international calendar, source of slippages which will be amplifying, whether at the level of the physical and mental health, disruption of the organization and financing of domestic football and the protection of national teams “Concludes David Terrier.
