From authorisation to allocation: testing FIFA’s international match calendar against article 102 TFEU

Abstract The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) sets an international match calendar binding on confederations, national associations and leagues. National team release rules require clubs to make players available at specified times. FIFA also organises competitions and can alter priority between its club tournament and national team commitments. This article asks how Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union constrains those combined functions. It starts from a textual asymmetry: the FIFA Statutes prescribe authorisation standards and state the calendar power in general terms. The article argues that European Superleague ’s reasoning extends to calendar rules controlling competing events’ effective access to players or dates. Under that interpretation, an unconstrained access power infringes Article 102 once its prerequisites are established. A particular allocation alleged to constitute exclusionary self-preferencing requires its own evidence. The Club World Cup’s release exception illustrates regulatory priority; foreclosure of a competing club event remains a separate evidential question. Published criteria and effective review follow from the proposed extension; timely reasons are inferred from meaningful review; a contemporaneous evidence record is recommended. The July 2026 provisions examined add participation and implementation duties but leave criteria and timing for rival date requests to further arrangements. This conditional autonomy preserves private coordination within applicable legal constraints, without conferring a general entitlement to reserved dates or treating procedural compliance as sufficient to exclude substantive abuse.