FIFPro Secretary General Theo van Seggelen said that FIFA "needs to start thinking about professional footballers and address their problems," according to Brian Homewood of REUTERS. Van Seggelen on Saturday said that "he was still waiting for details on a new FIFA stakeholders committee which will include player and club representatives." Acknowledging FIFA was "making progress" after a series of corruption scandals, Van Seggelen "wants to get the new football stakeholders' committee up and running as quickly as possible." He said, "Concerning the players, FIFPro, we still have a lot of work to do because we still have no clue what is going on with the stakeholders' committee and that for us is very important. We think that on football matters, the leagues, the clubs and the players have to have a mandate to solve the problems." Van Seggelen pointed out that, "away from the glamour of the big clubs, most professional players were ordinary wage-earners who were sometimes subject to abuse by their clubs." FIFPro has "regularly complained that, especially in Eastern Europe, players struggle to get paid on time and are sometimes ostracised by their clubs, and forced to train alone, if they complain" (REUTERS, 5/15).
