Molango raises prospect of player action over football calendar
LaLiga president Javier Tebas and PFA chief executive Maheta Molango have warned that football’s crowded calendar is putting players under unsustainable pressure, with Molango suggesting they may take more radical action if their concerns are ignored.
Professional Footballers’ Association chief executive Maheta Molango has raised the prospect of players taking radical action over football’s expanding calendar, as LaLiga president Javier Tebas warned that the demands placed on them are approaching breaking point.Speaking at the FIFPRO and Cleveland Clinic Peak Performance and Health Summit in London, the two leaders argued that decisions to add matches and competitions are being made without sufficient regard for recovery or the views of those affected.Molango said: “I think when you see that people want to treat football as a business when it suits them, and people want to follow the law when it suits them, then I think people start exploring very radical ways, which I think is never good news.”His comments stopped short of announcing a strike, but made clear that players are considering the power they hold if attempts to influence the calendar through discussion fail.Molango said: “Players have reached a point where if people don’t want to listen, they’ve discovered that they are the product. During Covid the stands were empty, but in the end, as long as the guys turned up and played, there was a product. If there’s no male or female turning up, there is no product.“We see those people who understand what their value is, understand what they bring to the table. Sometimes they’ve not spoken up, almost out of embarrassment, thinking ‘I know that people work nine, 10, 11 hours a day, and I know that I’m a privileged guy’, [but] I want to give the best version of myself and I cannot right now.”The PFA chief pointed to five withdrawals from England’s latest Nations League squad, including Cole Palmer, as evidence that the schedule is affecting players’ availability for fixtures they want to play.He also rejected the suggestion that rotating squads resolves the problem, arguing that supporters expect to watch leading players perform at their best rather than see them sidelined by fatigue or injury.Tebas’s warning places a major domestic league alongside the players’ union in questioning further calendar expansion, with league seasons required to accommodate international windows and additional tournaments.Their shared concern adds pressure on governing bodies to involve leagues and players in future decisions about competitions and recovery periods, before the possibility of player action becomes a practical threat to fixtures.