Chris Wood feels there is ‘potential’ for strike unless safeguards put in place

Nottingham Forest forward Chris Wood says there is “potential” for players to go on strike unless safeguards are put in place to protect them.

A report published by world players’ union FIFPRO on Monday lays bare the demands placed on players last season in terms of minutes played, miles travelled and insufficient recovery time between matches and seasons.

All 12 of the 32 teams involved in this summer’s Club World Cup who were analysed in the report did not have the minimum 28-day off-season rest period recommended by FIFPRO, while only one of those teams managed to have the minimum 28-day pre-season retraining period.

That came on top of a busy summer in 2024, where FIFPRO found only 14 per cent of players in Europe’s big five leagues who featured in the Euros had the 28-day minimum rest period, with only nine per cent of players in those leagues who featured at the Copa America getting the minimum rest.

Wood, who has joined FIFPRO’s Global Player Council, says the game’s authorities have to start listening to players.

Asked whether a strike could happen, he said: “It’s a potential thing I’m sure, but we don’t ever want to get to that point. We want to be able to try and safeguard as early as possible, to prevent anything happening.

“As FIFPRO we want to work with FIFA and other governing bodies to come to a better outcome and protect the players of the future, or the players of now.

“From the Club World Cup into the World Cup next year there’s not going to be a lot of rest time for a lot of these players, and it’s about working together and coming to agreement, or a way of working in the future where we don’t have to go to those extremes and be able to just see each side’s point of view.”

FIFPRO secretary general Alex Phillips pointed out that the last two Ballon d’Or winners were injured at the point they were honoured – Rodri in 2024 and Ousmane Dembele last week.

“It’s anecdotal, but how often is this going to keep happening until even the club owners realise this is bad for business?” he said.

“We’re looking at it from a player health perspective, but even the business people that own clubs and leagues are beginning, we think, to take note and to realise that this system is not working for anybody at the moment.”

FIFPRO is involved in two separate legal actions against football’s global governing body FIFA over what it sees as a failure to consult over the international calendar.

Relations between the organisations are strained to say the least, with FIFA accusing the union of “blackmail” in a statement in July and seeking to work with other player representative bodies which FIFPRO insists do not have legitimacy to consult on players’ behalf.

FIFA set out concrete measures designed to improve player well-being in July, which included a mandatory 21-day off-season break for players. However, FIFPRO data showed that seven of the 12 Club World Cup teams it analysed did not even get the minimum rest mandated by FIFA.

Darren Burgess, part of FIFPRO’s high performance advisory network, said: “You’ve got the perfect storm of how not to treat a human.

“You have a large number of games, and then you have less than the recommended off-season days, and then you have less than the recommended pre-season days to go into a large number of games again. So the cycle keeps continuing.”