Before India’s courts and federations took over the headlines, the heart of Indian football lived on its local grounds.

“Earlier, a player in Mumbai could play 100, 120 matches in the entire season,” Henry Menezes, former India goalkeeper and longtime football administrator tells DW. “Competitive matches, local grounds, different tournaments — he had the option to play.”

That system once formed the backbone of Indian football. District and state leagues fed into national tournaments, and professional players could climb step by step — from district clubs to state teams and eventually the national setup.

The Indian Super League (ISL) changed all that, breaking away from the national system more than a decade ago. It has been drifting further from the base of the pyramid that once produced its players ever since. Now, with the ISL on the verge of collapse, Indian football is at a crossroads.

A league in limbo

This summer, India’s Supreme Court stepped into football’s biggest fight. It ordered the All India Football Federation (AIFF) to run an open tender for commercial rights to the Indian Super League, ending the decade-long exclusive arrangement with its private operator.

The order came after months of uncertainty that saw the 2025–26 season placed on hold, clubs delay payments and the league’s leadership locked in negotiation. The federation has set an October 15 deadline for new bids to run the competition. If that fails, India’s top division could lose an entire season.

The ISL, launched in 2014 as a franchise-style competition, brought global stars and sponsorship money but created a parallel system outside the traditional football ladder. Its 15-year commercial deal with Football Sports Development Limited (FSDL) — a Reliance and Star India venture — expires next year. Talks on renewal stalled, and the dispute ended up in court.

Menezes says the confusion reflects a deeper structural gap. “In one column you have the Indian Olympic Association and the other column is the federation,” he said. “We have to actually merge and get into the right frame of things to carry forward. That is one of the reasons why everything went topsy-turvy with the ISL coming to a standstill.”

For now, the court’s order for an open tender means a reset is inevitable — but what it will look like remains unclear.

Politics, power and a legacy of control

This governance crisis is just the latest chapter in a troubled sport in India. Many senior AIFF and state officials also hold political office, blurring the line between administration and influence. In 2022, the football federation was suspended by FIFA for what it called “third-party interference.”

Former India captain Bhaichung Bhutia has called the federation “rotten to the core.” 

Menezes takes a more measured tone but doesn’t deny politics plays a major role. “The federation has become more professional,” he said, noting improvements in management structures. “A leader in politics can bring big tournaments and make things easier. Yet, that same system slows down change.”

A broken pyramid

Before looking to the future of the ISL, it’s worth considering its greatest legacy might be the broken connection between grassroots and the professional game. “A district champion cannot go beyond the district,” Menezes said. “There is no upgrade.”

At the same time, participation among children has exploded. “In the grassroots we talk about baby leagues where participation of kids in football from the age of 9 up to 17 have increased many folds,” Menezes continued. “It has become a business by itself. Every kid wants to play football.”

That split creates a paradox: the sport has never been more popular, yet routes for young players to climb the ladder are blocked. Private academies and independent coaches have filled the gap once managed by clubs and state associations.

What next for the ISL?

Few expect the ISL to vanish. The federation and its commercial partners have strong incentives to strike a new deal. Menezes believes whoever the new deal is with, it must be different from what has come before.

“We need professionals,” Menezes said, adding that the federation alone lacks the marketing expertise to make the league viable. The former player also believes the introduction of promotion and relegation would add further accountability.

It’s time for Indian football to make the games on the field the deciding factor, and to reestablish trust with community clubs, where tens of thousands of supporters come to support, Menezes adds. While this is true for clubs like Kerala Blasters or Mohun Bagan, many others struggle to bring in major crowds as most of the country’s football fans prefer to watch the English Premier League instead of the domestic game.

The AIFF’s tender process will decide whether the league restarts soon or whether reforms reshape its model altogether. Menezes believes the goal should be simple: professionalism guided by structure, and governance balanced by transparency.

“The federation needs professionals who understand business, and the investors must respect the football structure,” he said. “If both come together, India can finally have a sustainable league.”

“This is a chance to fix what was missing. If we get it right now, Indian football can finally start moving in one direction — forward.”

Edited by: Jonathan Harding

The international football player union FIFPRO reviewed how much players are playing, releasing its finidings in a report published on Monday.

Moroccan star Achraf Hakimi, as a result of his treble-winning season with PSG and his commitments with the national team, has been under extreme physical strain.

Last season, Hakimi, 26, played 69 matches, accumulating 6,371 minutes. This was a noticeable increase from his previous season, when he played 53 games and 4,869 minutes for club and country.

Hakimi was not alone in playing 69 games in the last campaign. Bayern Munich’s Joshua Kimmich played the same number of matches and almost the same number of minutes, and every member of the top 10 on the FIFPRO list easily surpassed the recommended limit of 55 matches per season.

Hakimi’s 2024-25 season started in Paris, representing his country at the Olympics (July 24 to August 8, 2024), and ended with the Club World Cup (June 15 to July 13, 2025). This meant his season lasted nearly an entire year, and his offseason was just 22 days.

The medical consensus regarding rest periods and season breaks is that players should be guaranteed four weeks between seasons with no commitments. There should also be a minimum four-week retraining period after an offseason break before starting with competition. Sadly, the two are less and less common at the highest level of modern football.

Even more games ahead

This season, Hakimi is on course, should PSG advance to the knockouts of the Champions League and Morocco do well at both the African Cup of Nations and the 2026 World Cup, to play 74 matches, which is nearly 7,000 minutes.

“People need to understand we’re not machines. To deliver the level of play fans want — intense, competitive matches — we also need time to rest,” Barcelona and France defender Jules Kounde said.

Hakimi’s situation isn’t new either. Earlier in the year, Bayern Munich’s Kim Min-jae was also the subject of interest after his schedule became untenable.

Hakimi has been pushing the limits of his capacity even before he turned 21. In the FIFPRO report, one of the major fears is the lack of protection currently around young players. Constant competition demands make young players more susceptible to long-term risks than older players, highlighting the real need for safeguards.

The number of minutes Moroccan players have played before turning 21 has risen dramatically in recent years. Before Hakimi turned 21, he had played over 10,000 minutes for club and country. Hakim Ziyech, Hakimi’s national team teammate from 2016 to 2024, hadn’t even played for Morocco and had played just over 3,000 minutes at club level before turning 21. Bilal El Khannouss, who plays in the Bundesliga for Stuttgart, accumulated even more playing time before turning 21, reaching 10,628 minutes for club and country.

Morocco clearly has many exciting young footballers, but managing their playing load will be key to their longevity in the game.

Hope for more action as legal battle begins

In the modern football calendar, players continue to be pushed not just to their limit but beyond it. Hakimi is one of the stars of the modern game and a leading player not just for the country of Morocco but also for the continent of Africa. If his form starts to dip or injuries start to become regular, then Hakimi’s playing load will be one of the places to look.

Failure to better manage player workload is costing every stakeholder in football. FIFPRO have launched legal action against FIFA over the schedule, but if nothing changes soon then those who make the “beautiful game” possible will remain at risk.

Edited by: Chuck Penfold

A FIFPRO report on the 2024-25 football season highlights concerns over the amount of football players in the men’s game are playing. Key findings cover several areas of concern, perhaps most notably continued calendar congestion and extreme heat.

The 32-team Club World Cup put an enormous strain on the players, with some, such as Achraf Hakimi, having their seasons stretch over almost an entire year as a result.

The report notes that Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea, Real Madrid, Manchester City and Bayern Munich all had their off-seasons and preseasons for the current campaign severely shortened because of the competition. Without improved safeguarding and better load management, there is concern that the participation of many players at the 2026 World Cup is at risk.

The FIFPRO report founds that the consensus of medical experts is that competition regulations should include a minimum of four weeks between seasons and a minimum of two days between appearances to allow for adequate recovery, and that the increased burden of travel should be considered when scheduling fixtures.

“You’ve got the perfect storm of how not to treat a human,” FIFPRO consultant Dr. Darren Burgess told journalists in a media call to present the report. 

“You’ve got players playing a large number of games followed by fewer than the recommended off-season days and preseason days followed by a large number of games again,” he said. “The cycle keeps repeating.”

“This leads to injury at worst and at best reduced capacity to perform,” he said.

Heat a concern

One of the other major concerns in the report was heat, which was highlighted for the first time five years after FIFPRO started delivering these annual reports.

“This year, with the impact at the Club World Cup, and the pathway towards the World Cup in the US, it felt necessary to include it in the report this year,” FIFPRO Director of Policy and Strategic Relations Alexander Bielefeld said.

“The risk to player health is clearly rising,” he added.

Using the Club World Cup as a case study, the report found that four games in the United States reached a temperature above 28 degrees Celsius WetBulb Globe Temperature (82 degrees Fahrenheit WBGT), which under FIFPRO guidelines meant they should have been postponed. A further 17 games saw temperatures that were close to the cancellation threshold.

“This is an issue that affects a lot of different playing markets in the context of a warming planet,” according to the report. “The Club World Cup was a wake-up call in this regard and a bad example of how to properly deal with the circumstances.”

On one occasion, Borussia Dortmund had their substitutes sit inside because temperatures outside were too high.

“The harder and longer athletes play, the greater their heat exposure, increasing risks from fatigue and dizziness to heat stroke and long-term illnesses,” Manal Azzi, an occupational health and safety expert for the International Labor Organization, told FIFPRO.

According to the FIFPRO report, six of the 16 host cities for the World Cup face conditions classified as “extreme risk” for heat-related illness, which is a concern for players and fans. With 48 teams involved across three countries with three varied climates, increased fatigue is a serious risk.

This matter is made more complicated by US President Donald Trump, who recently said he would move matches from host cities he deemed too dangerous, charging that San Francisco and Seattle were “run by radical left lunatics.”

What happens next?

With FIFPRO currently engaged in legal action against FIFA for the congested nature of the calendar and voices from the playing group growing even louder, there is hope that tangible change is on the way. The players’ union believes that years of accumulated data gives more weight to their arguments, and that there is a real sense in the game that no one disputes that load management is an issue.

“There is a significant shift in the discourse,” Bielefeld said. “This is not sufficient. We need urgent action, but we are in a very different space than we were two-three years ago.”

“We will keep fighting for the best possible outcome on this issue and many other issues,” Alexander Phillips, FIFPRO’s secretary general said.

“But they all boil down to the same issue,” he said, “which is that the system is not working”

In the meantime, football’s schedule rolls on and the World Cup looms large. With 48 teams and 104 games, it will be the biggest edition of the competition ever. Fans can only hope that next summer, the best players in the world will be fit and healthy enough to take part.

Edited by: Chuck Penfold

It’s not often that Bayern Munich are humbled, but after a 7-1 loss to Barcelona on the first matchday of the new Women’s Champions League group stage, the message was more coherent than the performance.

“We have to reflect on it and learn the right lessons from it,” said Germany international Klara Bühl.

“We have to learn from the game, stick together and move on,” said Bayern’s new coach Jose Barcala.

Such a heavy defeat is a shock to a side that has lost just two league games since 2023. Süddeutsche Zeitung, a German newspaper, said the result has the potential to “send shockwaves, not only through Munich, but also German women’s football as a whole.”

Though the size of the defeat is significant for the Bundesliga champions, many would suggest the shockwaves have been felt for some time.

Is Germany no longer among Europe’s elite?

Germany has not had a Champions League winner since FFC Frankfurt (now Eintracht Frankfurt) in 2015. The national team has not won a major tournament since the 2013 Euros. There is an increasing sense that Germany has been left behind in the explosion of the women’s game that began around the time of the 2019 World Cup.

Spain, the most recent World Cup winners, and Barcelona, who have been in six of the last seven Champions League finals, winning three, are the opposite. The country was barely on the elite women’s football map a decade ago and is now streets ahead of Germany, as national team coach Christian Wück recently reflected.

“The Spanish women don’t think about these basics anymore. They play as if it were second nature. We need to train intensively (to get to that point),” he said.

Is German women’s football suffering a talent drain?

Training is all very well. But increasingly, the Bundesliga is seeing a talent exodus, particularly of Germany’s best players. Sydney Lohmann (Manchester City), Sjoeke Nüsken (Chelsea) and Jule Brand (Lyon) have all departed for more money, bigger crowds and a better chance of European success.

Whether playing abroad for clubs stacked with talent or trying to make it at home in Germany, the problem for the country’s best players is playing enough.

“The development in this important area is too slow for my liking. Playing time is definitely not high. Some national team players don’t play enough at their clubs, not only in the women’s Bundesliga, but also abroad,” Wück said.

The 52-year-old called on coaches to trust younger players more in the Bundesliga in order to help themselves and the national team.

“We can only do this together. We need to find ways to give our players playing time. We need coaches who have the courage to bring in young players and give them time,” Wück said, echoing a similar plea from Germany men’s coach, Julian Nagelsmann.

Wück was broadly complimentary about Germany’s top flight, but it is clear that it is struggling to keep up financially with other leagues. Aside from German midfielder Lena Oberdorf’s €400,000 move from Wolfsburg to Bayern last year (joint 14th), no German club has paid any of the top 50 women’s transfer fees of all time.

Is Bundesliga helping or hindering Bayern?

After the Barcelona defeat, the questions that often follow the men’s team are starting to be raised for the women: is the Bundesliga a competitive and lucrative enough league for even its biggest club to succeed in Europe?

Bayern have won three Bundesliga titles in a row, but have failed to get past the quarterfinals of the Champions League since 2021. Whatever is working at home, isn’t working in Europe.

“I think a chance for Germany to make up the gap to other leagues can be to focus on the newer talents. Obviously, we then have to try to keep them in the Bundesliga, but it’s the same in the men’s football,” said Jessica Stommel, the head of women’s football at SPORTFIVE, a sports marketing agency that works with 14 women’s teams in Germany, told DW.

“It doesn’t always have to be just paying millions of transfer fees to buy the best players, because this is also not sustainable.”

It’s a model that is improving the chasing pack slowly but surely — Frankfurt were just a point of second last season — but being the breeding ground for young talent just won’t do at Bayern. Neither will another 7-1 loss. While one game rarely defines a season, both Bayern Munich and women’s football in Germany will need to find some answers soon if they’re to stand a chance of keeping up with the rest of Europe.

Edited by: Jonathan Harding

Immigration difficulties, mass deportation raids and climate issues have plagued the United States, the biggest of the three World Cup host countries, for most of 2025. With the first phase of ticket sales leaving fans astounded by the record-high prices, it raises the question: how much will fans really be able to enjoy the 2026 World Cup?

Immigration struggles

Since Donald Trump’s return to power, the US has made entering the country a nightmare for many.

Unpredictable rejections and even detentions at the border made headlines early in the year, notably in March when German citizens were being detained by US immigration.

The previous two World Cups had a fast-track, temporary visa process, but the US has yet to offer such a program. The final tournament schedule won’t be clear until the draw on December 5, leaving many fans facing a lengthy bureaucratic process before even knowing when, or if, their country will play.

For some, attending the tournament may already be legally impossible. At the start of the summer, Trump announced a new list of countries whose citizens are outright banned from traveling to the USA. An exception was defined for the players and staff from any sporting team taking part in the tournament, meaning the teams will be allowed in, but fans will be left sitting at home.

So far, the only nation from that list which has qualified for the World Cup is Iran. But local media in Brazil has speculated that their fans may also be barred from travel, as Trump has heavily sanctioned the South American country over the prosecution of former president and ideological ally Jair Bolsonaro. A World Cup without fans from Brazil, the only country to have qualified for every edition, is unimaginable.

Mass deportations

As difficult as getting into the country may be, staying might be just as hard. Mass deportation raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been carried out across the country for months now. The targets are usually large, liberal-voting cities such as  Los Angelesand Chicago. Many of these cities will be host sites for the tournament next year.

During the summer’s Club World Cup, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made its presence known. In a post on X, they stated their officers were “suited and booted ready to provide security.” Despite quickly deleting the post, they still advised attendees to carry proof of legal status.

Though the tournament ultimately concluded without any major ICE-related incidents, the statements caused enough fear to keep many fans away. Should this continue into next year, many fans might be discouraged from traveling.

High financial and environmental costs

On top of these civil rights concerns comes the financial impact on fans.

The most expensive 2026 final tickets are nearly four times higher than those in Qatar 2022 — from roughly $1,600 (€1,375) then to over $6,300 (€5,400) now.

Prices vary for the group stage and opening matches of each host nation. Matches played in Los Angeles and San Francisco, for example, are more expensive than those in Dallas and Philadelphia. But even with these disparities, group stage tickets, historically the cheapest of the tournament, are still about three times higher than the last edition.

Combined with “variable-pricing” schemes and resale portals with no price cap, simply getting a ticket could cost fans hundreds to thousands of dollars. Travel to the country and accommodation costs will make the trip even more untenable.

Along with the financial cost, there is also a large environmental one.

After the last World Cup took place in the small Gulf state of Qatar, this edition sees games taking place across the biggest three North American nations. This means teams and fans will have to rely primarily on air travel. The US will play its first game in Los Angeles, the second in Seattle, and the third again back in LA. That’s nearly 2,000 miles traveled on the most pollutive form of transportation.

While car rentals and ridesharing might offer a possiblity for traveling fans, the increase in road traffic is expected to be so great it will reportedly contribute to making this World Cup the most polluting ever.

Public transportation options also remain a major concern. The AT&T Stadium near Dallas, for example, will host the most matches of any venue but cannot be reached by public transport.

FIFA remain optimistic

FIFA President Gianni Infantino has reassured the public that immigration issues will not be a concern.

“There is definitely a commitment of the government in the United States to make sure that the process is smooth, so fans from all over the world will be welcome,” Infantino said during a press conference in August. He did not, however, detail how this process will work.

FIFA’s media director Bryan Swanson defended the ticket pricing structure, saying it is crucial to have “a ticketing model that reflects our responsibility to provide access to fans, while at the same time ensuring as much value as possible is retained for redistribution into the game around the world.”

When it comes to civil and human rights concerns, a group of 90 rights groups signed an open letter to FIFA asking them to address the growing abuses in the United States. No direct response was given.