Premier League reject Man City's request to postpone start of 2024/25 season, Pep Guardiola says

City believed to have made informal request to delay start of next season due to Fifa Club World Cup commitments

Pep Guardiola is concerned about the football calendar with Manchester City taking part in the end-of-season Fifa Club World Cup. PA

Pep Guardiola said Manchester City have had their request to postpone the first two games of the 2025/26 season to recover from their participation in the Fifa Club World Cup rejected by the Premier League.

City and Chelsea are the two English clubs who have qualified for the expanded month-long Club World Cup set to start on June 15 in the United States. The Premier League's season will begin in August.

The ever-expanding football calendar has been the hot topic to start this season. A report by global players' union FIFPRO said some players get only 12 per cent of the year to rest.

Players and managers have complained about the fixture congestion. One of those was City's Spanish midfielder Rodri, who last month said players were close to going on strike over the issue. Rodri cited fitness and fatigue as a major concern and, in a cruel twist of irony, then suffered a season-ending knee ligament injury in the 2-2 draw against Arsenal on September 22.

This comes at a time of strained relations between the club and league as City face a hearing into 115 charges of alleged rule-breaking, including a failure to co-operate with an investigation. City deny all charges.

Speaking at a press conference ahead of Saturday’s clash with Fulham, Guardiola said: “The Premier League [has] not allowed us to postpone – and Chelsea, I think, all the teams that will go to the World Cup – the first two games to have more recovery. Thank you so much! They don’t postpone these games.

“I think the club asked the Premier League, [for] the first or second game, to postpone it one or two, three weeks, in the middle [of the] week, to have one more week or two more weeks’ holidays after the World Cup.”

Asked to clarify if a request had not been allowed, Guardiola said: “Absolutely not. The Premier League say yes to us? No. Absolutely not. It’s not going to happen.”

The Premier League are yet to comment on Guardiola's claims.

Delaying the start of the 2025/26 season is problematic because it concludes with the next international World Cup. There are also fewer midweek dates available for rearranged matches following the recent expansion of European club competitions.

He said the Club World Cup will make it even more difficult for clubs to manage player workload.

He said: “It’s going to happen [tiredness]. I don’t know if we’re going to play more games than the treble year [2022/23], maybe we’ll play less games, but in the end, the big difference is when you finish the season and you [normally] go on holidays, you have to go to the States to play the World Cup. That is the moment we’re going to fight.”