FIFPro chief Sergio Marchi has launched a scathing assault on FIFA president Gianni Infantino, evaluating him to Nero and accusing him of inserting “financial profitability over human sustainability”.
Infantino’s newest brainchild, the Club World Cup, concluded final evening with Chelsea beating Paris Saint-Germain 3-0 within the remaining in New Jersey with the pinnacle of world soccer persevering with his appeal offensive with Donald Trump by inviting the US president handy out the trophy.
TAKE IT TO THE WORLD#FIFACWC pic.twitter.com/CmpyQdsyER
— DAZN Football (@DAZNFootball) July 13, 2025
The match got here on the finish of an extended European season and with many gamers in want of a break earlier than they go once more subsequent month in a 2025-26 marketing campaign that ends with the World Cup.
It was additionally performed throughout a northern hemisphere summer time with sweltering temperatures imposing even better bodily calls for on gamers.
There had been ‘some negatives’, says Infantino
Prior the ultimate, Infantino admitted there had been “some negatives” however nonetheless branded the Club World Cup the “most profitable membership competitors on the planet”.
Marchi, whose organisation was not invited to a pre-tournament briefing on participant welfare, disagreed, and in contrast Infantino to Roman emperor Nero who was renown for lavish extravagance and his disregard for human life.
He stated: “What was offered as a world celebration of soccer was nothing greater than a fiction created by FIFA, promoted by its president, with out dialogue, sensitivity, and respect for many who maintain the sport with their every day efforts.
“A grandiloquent staging inevitably harking back to the ‘bread and circuses’ of Nero’s Rome, leisure for the plenty whereas behind the scenes inequality, precariousness, and the shortage of safety for the true protagonists deepen.”
FIFA should be taught the teachings from the Club World Cup – Marchi
FIFA has already revealed it should use indoor, air-conditioned venues for daytime fixtures at subsequent summer time’s World Cup that may even be staged within the US.
And Marchi is hoping different classes will likely be discovered.
He added: “What occurred can’t be repeated beneath any circumstances at subsequent yr’s World Cup.
“We have been warning concerning the overcrowded schedule, the shortage of bodily and psychological relaxation for gamers, and the shortage of dialogue on the a part of Fifa. This approach of organising tournaments, with out listening to the federation that represents the world’s skilled footballers’ associations, is unilateral, authoritarian, and primarily based solely on a logic of financial profitability, not human sustainability.
“We can’t proceed to play with the well being of gamers to gas a advertising and marketing machine. There isn’t any spectacle potential if the voices of the protagonists are silenced.”
