On Monday, the Real Madrid president told reporters that the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup “killed” his club’s season, pointing to 28 injuries, a disrupted preseason, and a punishing midweek schedule as the root causes of a campaign that ended without a single trophy.
Real Madrid finished the 2025-26 season trophyless, with their rivals, Barcelona, sealing the LaLiga title with a 2-0 El Classico victory, while their Champions League run ended with a 6-4 aggregate defeat by Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals.
“I think the origin of it all is in the Club World Cup,” Perez said. “We didn’t have a pre-season. We had 28 injuries. We changed coach. We couldn’t recover our fitness. Playing every Wednesday and Sunday, the players get injured, and our fitness wasn’t sufficient.”
This is coming from someone who pushed for a more commercially ambitious global football calendar. He pushed for the European Super League project — which eventually collapsed. He enthusiastically backed the expanded Club World Cup. He has never met a tournament that could not be made bigger or more profitable. Now that the consequences have arrived at his own doorstep, the calendar has now become the cause for blame.
Regardless of how we feel about Perez, he wasn’t necessarily wrong in his claim. The evidence is there:
Real Madrid were eliminated in the Copa del Rey round of 16, knocked out of the Champions League in the quarter-finals, and beaten by Barcelona with three matchdays remaining in LaLiga.
The reality is that even elite footballers cannot sustain a 70-plus match calendar without physical breakdown.
The broader issue Perez raises doesn’t just affects Real Madrid but every other top club. The 2025 Club World Cup was essentially an experiment in how much football the global game could sell. The answer from the look of things is more than the players can physically handle. Perez himself acknowledged the tension plainly: “I want to play in the Club World Cup, but not by throwing away a whole season.”
In a sense, the Club World Cup was a success. It generated revenue and new markets. Injuries and burnout are problems clubs have to deal with on their own.
