Sepp is at it again: limit leagues to 16 teams

[Oscar]

LINK (http://soccernet.espn.go.com/headlinenews?id=271291&cc=5739)

Priceless:

Blatter said that measures needed to be taken to cut the number of matches that players took part in, especially since the death of Marc-Vivien Foe....'We must do something otherwise we will never get off this carousel of too much football with no holidays for the players, injuries and even deaths. The quality of football will suffer if there continues to be too much.'

[RichardL]

Hmm, players play to many games. What could be cut back?

League matches which people want, or new meaningless international tournaments that nobody gives a toss about?

Well as only one of those two makes FIFA money it's not hard to see how he reaches his conclusion.

[pething101]

Brillant stuff!

Really top notch!!

Why did no one ever think about that?

I mean, Jack Warner surely is bright enough to come up with something like this.

[kckicker23]

This would be horrible.

Sepp really needs to stop messing with the game. I think the Foe incident is not going to become a trend, this seems like a real knee-jerk reaction from Sepp. The game isn't broken, Sepp, stop trying to fix it!

[Bill Archer]

Blatter isn't trying to "fix" anything except his bankroll and his power. I'd add his ego but I can't see how it could get any bigger.

Schlepp knows as well as anybody else that Foe could have died shaving from that ascending aneurism, and this cynical attempt to turn it to his own advantage is, well, typically shameful.

The players are upset about the year-long, unending demands that FIFA places on them with tournaments and national team duties. Blatters' solution is to cut back on those silly Club games.

Coincidentally, these are the only games that he hasn't figured out how to get a cut of the box office off the top.

Still, as long as he can keep on buying votes from guys like Uday Hussein for a mere $250,000 a year of somebody else's money, this vampire will be around sucking the blood out of the sport.

[Scoey]

It wasn't clear from the article just who will be voting on this proposed limitation. Are any of the members from Spain, Germany, England or Italy? All those leagues have over 16 teams, and I can't imagine they'd favor a change.

I'm a bit of a voyeur when it comes to watching European football. I have no investment in any of the outcomes -- I watch just to see good, competitive, passionate play. Accordingly, the change wouldn't really affect me personally, and it would make each game more competitive and meaningful. It would probably increase my viewing pleasure.

However, in principle, this is shameful. Just another money-grab. Sepp's hypocrisy is just underscored by the article's last paragraph:

In terms of the substitution rules, Blatter has previously made clear he deplores situations such as England's friendly against Australia where Sven-Goran Eriksson made 11 changes.

[Guinho]

Of course, the international calendar should include continental championships, the World Cup, and some friendly dates. That's about all one would need. Of course if FIFA limited it to that, UEFA would quickly fill the slack by adding another group round to the Champions' League. Limiting national League games would have the same result.

G.

[jlmatthews]

Blatter is an idiot..IMHO

[RichardL]

Originally posted by Guinho
Of course if FIFA limited it to that, UEFA would quickly fill the slack by adding another group round to the Champions' League. Limiting national League games would have the same result.

G.
not really. UEFA's already cut back to one group stage as two stages didn't really work. It had nothing to do with not being able to fit matches in.
The number of league games isn't even that relevant anyway as leagues don't start and end at the same time. I don't think any of the leagues play more than one round of league matches a week anyway

[Bauser]

Sepp is the problem, not the league size. The leagues have basically contained the same amount of teams since football morning. Some have even been reduced in recent years from 42 to 38 matchdays.

All the new competitions who have been introduced over the years - less or more meaningful ones - have become larger and larger so it is better to cut back on them - which indeed UEFA has done with the CL from next season.

[Jimjamesak]

A good idea in theory but...

"He's going off the rails on a Crazy Train!!!"

Thank You Ozzy and no thank you Sepp.

[ramckay]

As evidenced by previous replies, there are a lot of cynics on these boards who are automatically going to go for the ad hominem attack on Blatter, but I won't immediately discredit the idea because of its author.

At this point I don't have a strong opinion of what he's proposing. At face value there is some merit to the idea, but I don't think the way he's choosing to introduce it is going to win anyone over to his side of thinking.

I'm just annoyed by the attitude here that any attempts to change the way the game is played, by Blatter or FIFA, are automatically viewed with suspicion. I believe that the game is much better today than in years past because of FIFA's work.

I don't think 16 teams is doable, and I'm a little surprised that he would make such a statement. Maybe 18, but not 16. That is, at least not with the tradition home-and-away schedule where each team plays each other. It would only be possible if leagues were willing to adopt a different system, like in American football, where schedules are created ahead of time, and not all teams play each other -- but that would be even more blasphemous than limiting tables to 16. In fact, I'm a little sheepish that I even brought it up now... :D

http://www.prism.net/ramckay/bssm/rick/sepp.jpg

At any rate, there was a slightly different version of quotes from Sepp on the boston.com site, (http://www.boston.com/dailynews/190/sports/Blatter_to_propose_cut_to_16_t:.shtml) and one in particular that confused me:

"We must do something, otherwise we will never get off this carousel of too much football, with no holidays for the players, injuries and even deaths,'' he said. "The quality of football will suffer if there continues to be too much. We have to protect the players. I don't want to bury players."

Blatter is confident most associations would abide by the rule and warned potential violators.

"There would be no more national team, only club football. No more England," he said. "If such a decision is taken by the congress, I am sure everyone will abide by it. But it will not happen immediately. There needs to be time to adapt, and it will take place step by step."

:confused: Anyone make any sense of that?

[olafgb]

The idea is absolute nonsense regardless, who the author is. Besides, this is almost unscrupulous to take an advantage of Foe's death for the own ideas, although the death with a huge probability doesn't have anything to do with playing too many games.

Before we're cutting the leagues to 16 we should work on some other tournaments like Confed Cup, Club WC, some associations' WC qualifyers, etc. The league is the territory of the clubs, where the huge majority of the clubs (just about 1/3 in the top leagues is playing international) absolutely depends on the income of the league, which of course would fall with less games. And the average player in the leagues is not at all affected by playing too many games; if at all, then this are the national players who are taking part in Sepp's weird and superfluous competitions.

I'm not sure, maybe I'm seeing this with a little 'Schadenfreude' as this will bring a crash of at least the top clubs if not the elite leagues with FIFA much closer. But then Blatter reached his aim with less games for the top players as the clubs will then refuse to send their players to the national team...

[hemariva]

I really don't care who said it, if it's a FIFA president wanting to cut down on meaningful matches that don't make him money instead of meaningless matches that do make him money, while using a players irrelevent on-field death to augment his "point", it's obvious he is simply in the game for one reason. Money.

I was glad Sepp backed up the 32-team World Cup, but then he blames the Australians then says he plans on working to cut down on club seasons. He gained one point then quickly lost three in my standings.

[Doctor Stamen]

Sepp Blatter is a scrotum. He should get rid of the Kirin and Confederations Cup, and get UEFA to return the Champions League to a knock out cup if he wants fewer games. Of course that'll mean less cash for the G14, Septic Bladder and the rest of the greedy arrogant morons. He's just using Foe's death to pick on smaller teams whilst maintaining his own interests.

[RobtheAggie]

Originally posted by RichardL
not really. UEFA's already cut back to one group stage as two stages didn't really work. It had nothing to do with not being able to fit matches in.
The number of league games isn't even that relevant anyway as leagues don't start and end at the same time. I don't think any of the leagues play more than one round of league matches a week anyway

But the UEFA Cup has just added a five team group stage. That is going to add games for those players.

[Matt Clark]

Gosh ... just days after his pissy little FIFA sideshow tournament is completely overshadowed in the lucrative European TV market by the exciting finale of the (20-strong) Spanish league season, Blatter comes up with the idea of limiting club football by mandating 16-team national leagues.

What a visionary ... and of course this is a coincidence. And it is most emphatically not an attempts to shamelessly exploit a tragic death to ensure a little bit more elbow room at football's top table for him and his increasingly pointless band of whey-faced technocrats.

I've said it before, I'll say it again - the sooner Sepp Blatter is run over by a bus and every FIFA institution on the planet razed to the ground, the better.

[Father Ted]

Dear Sepp: Foe did not die while playing a domestic league game. He died playing a meaningless FIFA tournament. How about starting by getting rid of the Confederations Cup, you idiot?

[Mobile]

Septic Bladder is a wanker of the highest order.

FIFA can rot in hell. The game doesn't belong to them.

[olafgb]

Werner Hackmann, Commissioner of German Bundesliga: "That's not Blatter's business. For us 18 is the right number and we don't see a reason to change it".