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The Fifa Club World Cup this summer could create “great difficulty” for Manchester City and Chelsea’s preparations for the next Premier League season, the league’s chief executive Richard Masters has warned.
The two clubs will be England’s representatives in Fifa’s new 32-team competition in the US, which has sparked legal challenges from player unions and domestic leagues.
Player welfare has been one of the key drivers behind those challenges, and Masters fears there will be precious little respite for the players of either club should they go deep into the competition.
“The leagues and the players’ unions are not happy with the decisions that are being taken at a global level,” he said in an interview for The Boardroom podcast from Sky Sports.
“We’ve seen the Club World Cup come in, and obviously that is going to have an impact on the Premier League. If either Manchester City or Chelsea get to the final of that competition, the Premier League starts four weeks later, and all players are supposed to have three weeks off as part of the contractual commitment.
“So how does that work? With great difficulty I would say. We believe that if leagues and players’ unions were involved in the decision-making processes about how these competitions are put together, you’d have better outcomes. That’s what we’re calling for.”
The Club World Cup final is due to be played on 13th July, with the 2025/26 Premier League campaign getting under way on 16th August.
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola said in October that the Premier League had told his club they would not accept a request from the club to delay matches because of their involvement in the Club World Cup.
In a wide-ranging interview, Masters also said the marks left by the Premier League’s ‘Big Six’ briefly joining a European Super League in 2021 were “nearly healed”.
“We’ve got an amazing opportunity in front of us, and probably the only people who can stop us continuing to be successful are ourselves (the clubs),” he admitted.
While the threat of breakaway leagues seems more remote now than in the past, the league faces other challenges from its clubs.
It spent more than UK£45 million (US$55.8 million) in legal costs in the 2023/24 season as it sought to uphold its rules amid challenges from clubs, and there will have been significant further expenditure this season, with the league’s major disciplinary case against City still ongoing.
The club were charged in 2023 with more than 100 alleged breaches of its financial rules and an independent commission heard the case between September and December, with an outcome now pending.
City have also challenged the legality of the Premier League’s associated party transaction (APT) rules, which seek to ensure deals done with entities linked to a club’s ownership are at fair market value.
One of the current and former government’s key objectives for the new independent regulator is to safeguard the financial sustainability of clubs in the top five tiers of English soccer.
But Masters was adamant that soccer is “not on a financial precipice” and warned over-regulation risked the top flight’s unique selling point.
“We have that jeopardy, we have that constant fizz of compelling entertainment,” he said.
“There are many different reasons [for the Premier League’s worldwide popularity] but that, I think, is what separates us from others.
“If you have a third party coming in from the side and regulating a part of that system financially by being able to look at clubs’ business plans and potentially constrain their ability to invest, that worries us.
“We have always been pro investment within measured risks. The Premier League is not a pension fund, it is a place where capital is put at risk. There is no certainty of outcome, that is one of the things that makes it interesting.
“We do worry that a new regulatory function might be risk-averse and might inhibit clubs ability to invest. And the ability to invest is key to competitive balance, and that jeopardy that I’m talking about.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Masters also predicted that changes in the broadcast market will have an impact on the soccer industry in the future.
“If you think where football was ten years ago, it’s a sort of version of where we are today,” said Masters.
“But I hope the Premier League will still be in its current position globally.
“I think obviously, things are going to change. Maybe the broadcast market. But I hope that we retain and maintain some of the great things about English football.”
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