FIFA warns of Cup ban if players bolt to new league

ZURICH — Soccer’s biggest names would be banned from the World Cup if they play in a breakaway European Super League, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said Wednesday.

Infantino, speaking to a small group of reporters at FIFA headquarters, said the governing body would punish players at clubs like Barcelona, Manchester City and Bayern Munich if they left soccer’s organized structure to form a privately-owned league.

“Either you are in or you are out,” Infantino said, listing the World Cup, European Championship and national leagues as competitions that players from breakaway teams could be excluded from. “This includes everything.”

Talk of a long-threatened super league was revived Friday when German magazine Der Spiegel published confidential documents and emails from clubs and soccer bodies in its “Football Leaks” series.

Real Madrid was revealed to be working with consultants on a 16-team Super League to kick off in 2021 — effectively replacing the Champions League and outside the control of UEFA.

The plan calls for 11 storied clubs from Spain, England, Germany, Italy and France to get ownership stakes and riskfree Super League membership for 20 years, with five more clubs from those countries invited to play.

The breakaway from soccer’s historic hierarchy — FIFA, the six continental bodies and 211 national federations — would allow officials to ban players from major competitions, including the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

“The idea is if you break away, you break away. You don’t keep one foot in and one foot out,” said FIFA legal director Alasdair Bell. “That would be the general approach we would follow, but of course lawyers can debate this for a long time.”

Both Infantino and Bell were longtime staffers at UEFA, which has steadily changed Champions League prize money and entry rules to favor elite clubs and stall breakaway threats.

“This is the history of the last 20 years,” said Infantino, who has clashed this year with European soccer officials and club leaders over FIFA’s proposed Club World Cup project, which is funded by Japanese investor SoftBank.

Infantino said his plan — potentially featuring at least 12 European clubs in a 24-team lineup, and worth a promised $3 billion every four years — was a good alternative to a private closed league.