Big teams threatens boycott of Club World Championship

Europe's biggest soccer clubs plan to boycott next year's FIFA Club World Championship and test the legality of rules that force them to make players available to national teams.

FIFA announced Feb. 29 that it plans to revive the club tournament as a six-team event in December 2005. The plan is opposed by 18 of the top clubs in Europe.

"We're satisfied with the current competitions and have no wish to fill the schedules even more," Bayern Munich's president Karl-Heinz Rummenigge was quoted as saying by Efe agency. "No club from the (group) will participate in this FIFA competition. We refuse to play the world championship and our decision is final."

The champions of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the North and Central American and Caribbean region would be drawn to play in the first round, and the European and South Americans champions would have byes until the semifinals.

The group unanimously agreed to press ahead with its demand for financial compensation from FIFA and the Union of European Football Associations for releasing players for national team duty. The clubs want to test whether current rules "under which the clubs must release their players to the national teams, for no payment and at conditions unilaterally imposed by FIFA is an infringement of law with regards to fair trading."

FIFA president Sepp Blatter has said he wouldn't negotiate with the teams because the group has no official standing within soccer. FIFA spokesman Andreas Herren declined comment Tuesday.