The president of the Italian Footballers’ Association (AIC), Umberto Calcagno, spoke again about Milan - Como in Australia, the first-ever Serie A match abroad, in an interview with Tuttosport.
“The issue is not the match itself, since it will remain an exceptional event. Even if it’s played 28,000 km away, with time zones and temperature changes that are hard to handle, there’s still the question of whether this is the model we should be following.”
“The top players have already accepted that they must play more and that new sources of revenue must be found. The concern is the impact on their performances. For example, Bastoni played more than 70 matches last season. But he almost certainly didn’t play the seventieth with the same physical and mental freshness as the fiftieth. I think people need to be put back at the center of the project, and I include the fans in that.”
“By making players play so much, we lower the quality of the spectacle, and we lose the two pillars of our world. The players and their salaries? If they earn high wages, it’s because they are good and generate wealth. But even high salaries don’t justify pushing past certain limits. We are standing alongside Serie A in a lawsuit, as the global players’ union and as European leagues, against FIFA.”
