> Get your lawyers to review the contractual structure of leagues and clubs, it can't be that the whole international set of deals is failsafe, players can prob

> Get your lawyers to review the contractual structure of leagues and clubs, it can't be that the whole international set of deals is failsafe, players can probably just walk. I think you're mixing up two things: 1. domestic club competitions - Serie A in Italy, the Bundesliga in Germany, The Premier League in England etc - where players have contracts with clubs and where the most successful teams in each league will compete things like the Champions League. 2. the national game - where country-level football associations select teams based on various national eligibility criteria to compete with other countries in continental competitions (European Championship, CONCACAF Cup etc) and the World Cup. FIFA are not really involved with #1, it is primarily concerned with the nation-level competitions. It does have a club-level competition between the winner of each confederations' Champions League equivalent, but only the non-European participants really care about that. Additionally, players can and do "just walk" at the national level - some choose not to play either because they don't want to be injured playing for their country in a 9-0 victory over San Marino when their domestic club is in a tight race for the title or they're on a Champions League run. Players also refuse to play for personal reasons - like due to a falling out with a coach (Roy Keane for Ireland in 2002) or with an association (like Duncan Ferguson for Scotland in the '90s). So they know they can refuse to play, but they continue to do so. There is not a snowball's chance in hell that an alternative World Cup would gain any sort of traction at all. Fans would be dismissive and the various national football associations would not take it seriously either. Additionally, the footballing calendar is already quite full so you couldn't run it in parallel with the existing tournaments, meaning that you couldn't slowly develop and grow the competition gradually, you'd need to replace the world cup from day one. As shitty as FIFA are, they're here to stay.