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La Liga becomes first league to sue FIFA over Qatar, probably won't be the last

La Liga becomes first league to sue FIFA over Qatar, probably won't be the last

FIFA should have a new president soon – unless of course the old president, Sepp Blatter, comes through on his thinly veiled threats to stick around after all. But, for whoever that will be, an ongoing and pesky problem will remain.

That problem that lingers intractably and unpleasantly is the 2022 World Cup, slated for Qatar.

There's the persisting suspicions of bribery in the bidding process and the mounting deaths of construction workers on a mass scale at the hands of purported Qatari negligence. And now Spain's La Liga is challenging FIFA's decision to move that edition of the tournament to the winter.

Shifting the tournament to November and December, rather than its usual June-July timeframe constituted a pseudo-compromise with the many critics of a summer World Cup in a country where temperatures will rise as high as 130 degrees. But the Spanish league, like many others, contends that the inconvenience to the club seasons, which will have to go on hiatus for at least a month and as a long as two, will be enormous. So it has appealed FIFA's decision to the Court of Arbitration in Sport.

It seemed inevitable that somebody would bring some kind of legal action against FIFA and its 2022 shenanigans. A rumored lawsuit by FOX, which holds the U.S. rights to the Qatar tournament and now, suddenly, found itself owning a property that will overlap with the NFL season, was apparently avoided by FIFA awarding it the 2026 World Cup as well – in a no-bid contest that surely delivered the rights at a below-market price.

FIFA previously rejected the European Club Association's demand that it be compensated. But La Liga now claims that shuffling its schedule for that season will cost it upwards of $70 million in revenues.

UEFA has called on La Liga to drop its challenge, saying it, as European soccer's governing body, had already agreed to the move. But it's hardly unlikely that other leagues will join the Spanish in their resistance. After all, every league with a fall-spring schedule – and that's just about all of them, save for Major League Soccer, the Russian Premier League, a few Scandinavian leagues and some others – will be badly inconvenienced by the move.

FIFA and UEFA's obstinate attitudes will only serve to deepen the already-gaping rift between the game's professional clubs and the regional and global governing bodies. The clubs have felt for years like FIFA and UEFA take liberties with the players and the schedule, claiming them for longer periods and putting ever more international dates on the calendar. But their contracts are owned and paid by their day-to-day employers, whose players are returned to them tired at best and injured at worst.

At some point, something will have to give. And with the World Cup now running roughshod through the clubs' commercial and sporting interests, this first fit of resistance could be only the beginning. Unless some kind of solution is found, this ugliness could drag on for years yet.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.