Jonas Baer-Hoffmann sighs. “This is not the work that we’re normally set up to do.” The general secretary of FIFPro has just described his organisation’s work in helping footballers get out of Ukraine after the Russian invasion, and female players escape from Taliban rule in Afghanistan. To say that he is frustrated by the way that football is run would be an understatement. “The governance of football is in a massive crisis in the way that decisions are being taken,” he says.
The International Federation of Professional Footballers, or FIFPro for short, is the worldwide representative body for footballers, representing 66 different national unions and over 60,000 players. Most football fans will probably be familiar with the organisation for its role in the annual FIFA Best awards, where they organise the players’ votes for the Men’s and Women’s World XIs. Their name also appears when you fire up FIFA on a games console, thanks to their commercial arm’s role in player licences.
Yet not only is this just a small fraction of their work, it is almost irrelevant when compared with what they have been occupied with this year. As Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in February, FIFPro sprang into
