European clubs sign “less football” deal with Uefa

European football clubs on Tuesday announced a deal with UEFA to cut the number of international fixtures, which they complain can overload players, but FIFA, which has the final say, questioned their stance. The European Club Association (ECA), which groups 201 sides from all 53 UEFA member nations, said that it had backed moves to cut the annual number of international matches from the current 12 to nine. “The agreement with UEFA is a major breakthrough for European club football. With this agreement, UEFA clearly recognises the importance of clubs and the significant contribution they make to the success of national team football,” ECA and Bayern Munich chief Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said in a statement. The announcement came after an ECA general assembly in the Polish capital Warsaw, a fitting venue for debate given that the country is poised to host the European Championship in June along with neighbouring Ukraine. The deal foresees the end of August friendly matches and the introduction of rules allowing the release of each player for international duty for no more than one tournament per year. It also calls for a push to ensure that all the globe’s international championships end by mid-July and for the Africa Cup of Nations to start as early as possible in January. Releasing players for that tournament, whose 2012 edition ran from January 21 to February 12, can hinder clubs in European leagues, notably those without a winter break. The ECA-UEFA deal, valid from June 1 to May 30, 2018, also covers injury insurance for European clubs’ players on international duty. It will also bolster their share of profits from the European Championship, which are awarded as recognition of their contribution to the quadrennial tournament. Under an existing deal, the clubs can expect a total 55-million-euro ($74m) slice from Euro 2012. That will be “substantially increased” at Euro 2016 in France, the ECA said. While lauding European football’s governing body, the ECA has been at loggerheads over the calendar with UEFA’s global counterpart FIFA, the ultimate arbiter. “The situation remains unsatisfactory in relation to FIFA,” Rummenigge said. That sparked a terse statement by FIFA, which said it was “surprised” and took Rummenigge to task for boycotting talks on the issue. FIFA said that stance made it “very difficult for progress to be made in discussions with the European clubs”, and underlined that it had called a global meeting on the issue on March 5. “FIFA remains, as always, willing to discuss with ECA on these topics, as it does with all other stakeholders in the world football community,” it said. “FIFA would like to recall that the international dates and the international match calendar have to be applied on a worldwide basis and that this calendar is ultimately regulated by FIFA, as football’s world governing body.”