CAF and C'CAF can keep their biennial nations cups. I'm just looking for FIFA to implement a rule that only one of them is eligible for calendar protection (i.e. player release) per four-year window. Hey, a man can dream can't he?
Speaking of the AFCON, CAF’s Motsepe confirms Cameroon will host postponed AFCON 2022 in January: http://www.insideworldfootball.com/...eroon-will-host-postponed-afcon-2022-january/
The Concacaf Gold Cup's Big-Picture Prestige Problem—and a Potential Solution: https://www.si.com/soccer/2021/07/15/gold-cup-issues-usa-mexico-concacaf-copa-america I for one would be on board with a 24-team Copa Pan-Americana held on a quadrennial basis as long as the Gold Cup and Copa America are no longer held separately in addition to it.
Agreed - only way it happens like that is if Concacaf and Conmebol finally merge, and too many petty FIFAcrats have too much wealth and power to lose for it to be feasible. A Pan-American Nations League league would be much more feasible... but let's face it: publicly, there's no rapprochement at all b/w Montagliani and Domínguez.
The core issues are twofold: First is the fact that more matches always equals more $$$. Therefore, the financial incentive is always to schedule more matches. This is why we have bloated qualifying schedules. Until this gets addressed, nothing is going to change. Second is the lack of unified player voice in opposition to the bloated match calendar (or on any issue). Although apparently there is a players "labor union", it's completely ineffective. So players keep on getting run into the ground and getting hurt. I'd love to see players start inserting "minutes" caps into their contracts in order to protect themselves (for example a maximum of 4000 minutes in a calendar year/500 minutes in any calendar month).
I think both confederations would benefit from a merge. I personally think you maintain the South American brands as they have all the history eg Copa America, Copa libertadores etc. would be good for world football to have someone keep uefa and fifa in check
Yes, definitely the SA brands would be important to keep because they are very famous commercially. UEFA and ECA today rejected the idea to play the WC every 2 years so - even if the others proceed - it won't happen: there can't be a WC without UEFA teams.
South American Federations do not want to lose power. Feds like Argentina and Brazil and Uruguay do not want a bunch of small crappy Caribbean teams basically telling them what to do and what is best for them.
Beyond wanting to make money, there are reasons why there are so many qualifiers. I like CONMEBOL having 18 games better than if they had two groups of five, and they don't have a Nations League or qualifiers for a confederational tournament. AFC has 4.5 spots for 46 teams, and Concacaf has 3.5 spots for 35 teams. When about ten percent of teams qualify, it shouldn't be surprising to have two group stages. Each group stage has to be double round-robin (Concacaf made an exception this year and OFC makes exceptions), so a group of six requires ten games. AFC has WCQs double as Asian Cup qualifiers. CAF doesn't play as many WCQs because they have confederational qualifiers. So many WCQs are played between teams with no chance at qualifying, and I wonder if teams make much money from some games. Did Maldives and Guam make money from playing each other?
The minutes cap is an interesting idea. It may help eliminate seamlessly pointless competitions like league cups (ie. 2nd domestic cup competitions). OTOH, it should be pointed-out that none of these club competitions are new. Top clubs were playing over 55 matches per season 40 years ago too. The CL expanded by maybe 4 or 5 matchdays, but cup replays were eliminated and leagues were often reduced in size (meaning 38 matches to decide a domestic championship, instead of 42). The big changes (expansions) came on the FIFA / national-team side. Entire new competitions formed, regional championships and WC kept expanding with no offsetting decrease in the length of qualifying, club world cup tripled in size and length. When COVID put the football world on pause, many club competitions were cancelled or made leaner, but national team competitions remained bloated and no noticeable changes were made to compensate for the lost time when no football was played. Competitions were simply postponed resulting in the inevitable back-log of fixtures that we have now (when will they even have time to replay the Brazil - Argentina match?).
Club teams have expanded match schedules now though. More than just the top teams are going to play a lot of minutes because of some new UEFA conference whatever it is called league league. Also CONMEBOL has expanded club competitions over the years.
Not sure about CONMEBOL expanding. Argentina's Primera division actually seems lighter compared to the old apertura/clausura format. I know there are a bunch of new cup competitions but if you add it all up, its still better than ~10 years ago (or at worst similar). Brazil's domestic calendar has always been crazy busy. Not sure about the rest. In Europe, the new Conference League was added but Europa League has been reduced in size. In the end, the same # of teams qualify for a European competition of some sort. Of course, come 2024 its a another story. That's when the fixture schedules of top club teams (and even not-so-top teams) will actually look different/busier for the first time in ~30 years.
FIFA has to streamline World Cup qualifying. It must ditch this notion that every country in the world should have a chance to qualify. It's nice in theory but impractical--and there are way too many qualifying matches between sharks and minnows that are a waste of time and money. The number of qualifying matches, and the qualifying schedule, should be cut by half, IMO. That might mean limiting WC qualifying to the top half of teams in world rankings. FIFA has indicated that it would streamline qualifying as part of making the WC bi-annual--an idea I do not support and that is not going to happen with UEFA opposed to it. There are already too many games in EVERY professional sport--and this constant grab for more games and more money needs to stop.
If that is the case just make the World Cup a tournament of the top 48 teams in the FIFA rankings. (Or a Mix of other rankings since some people hate that formula and prefer other formulas.) Heck, 64 teams since we are cutting back on qualifying.
While I agree in theory, the problem is that FIFA does not have any control over the qualifying process. Once the number of places allocated to each confederation is determined by FIFA, the confederations have complete freedom in designing their qualifying process. And the problem is that while most of the bigger nations that are highly likely to qualify generally want a shorter and simpler qualifying process, within each federation the smaller nations (who want as many matches as possible) have more votes.
This, out of the mouth of a candidate for the FIFA presidency, would be suicidal UEFA's literally the only confederation where this happens. Conmebol has no minnows anymore; the rest of the confeds have a more sensible, tiered qualifying format avoiding a bunch of mismatches.
I suppose you could merge the UEFA Nations League with WCQ. Other confeds could also follow a similar process. Personally I don't really think there are too many international games, the problem is the games that are played are terrible. Regardless, merging qualifiers with the Nations League could solve both "problems" if one wished to do so. If you didn't want to just eliminate the lower-ranked teams outright, you could maybe have a limited number of playoff games at the end of the process so a lower-ranked team that has a good run still theoretically has a chance at qualification. Right now UEFA teams are playing up to 18 competitive games a cycle (6 NL, 10 WCQ group stage + 2 WCQ playoffs for some teams). If you wanted to take this down to say 12 or 14, maybe you could something like this: Expand Nations League A to 18 teams, 3 groups of 6 each. For the final 4 tournament, just add the best runners-up or the defending champions to the 3 group winners. = 10 matches per team + 2 more for NL final 4 teams. Nations League B, again 18 teams in 3 groups of 6. = 10 matches per team I'd scrap League D and just have 19 teams in League C. 3 groups of 5 and 1 of 4. = 8 or 6 matches per team. UEFA now will have 16 spots, so maybe the top three in League A groups qualify automatically, that's 9 spots. 7 spots left, now we have the playoffs. Remaining 9 teams in League A, top 6 (top 2 per group) in B, and 3 group winners from C go to playoffs. 18 teams. Two rounds of playoffs to get to 7 teams qualifying. Round 1: League A teams and best-ranked (or best-performing in NL group stage) League B team get a bye from this round. The other 5 League B teams plus the 3 League C teams play for 4 spots in Round 2. Round 2: 10 teams that got byes plus Round 1 winners playoff for remaining 7 spots. Maximum 14 competitive games per cycle if a League B team plays both rounds of playoffs. One slight flaw with this is that 12 League B teams are eliminated outright after the NL. If you wanted you could add more teams to the playoffs from League B and make the playoffs single-leg if necessary to avoid adding more games. Edit: Maybe advance top 3 from NL B. 9 from NL A (4-6th place in groups), 9 from NL B (top 3 in each group), 3 NL C winners. Round 1: 14 teams (12 NL B and C and 2 worst from NL A) play this round. 7 winners advance. Round 2: 7 best NL A play 7 Round 1 winners for 7 WC spots.
Regarding the proposal to have the World Cup every 2 years, the EPL, EFL and SPL unanimously came out to oppose it yesterday, making the point that ""new competitions, revamped competitions or expanded competitions for club and national team football are not the solutions to the current problems of our game in an already congested calendar." Hard to argue with that. FIFA hopes member associations will make a decision by the end of the year on whether to water-down the World Cup for a few extra $$.
I think a better proposal would be to have a 16-team Confederation's Cup style tournament features the top teams from each Confederation. Year 1: World Cup Year 2: Continental Championships Year 3: Confederations Cup Year 4: World Cup qualifiers For example, a tournament with the top 4 teams each from UEFA and the top three teams from CONMEBOL, CONCACAF, Africa, and Asia would get you right to 16 teams. And the qualifiers would be determined by the previous year's continental championships.
I'm not sure it would even be possible to have continental championships if you had a WC every 2 years or a tournament like the one you describe above. That is the major flaw I see. Well that and the fact that the old confederations' cup never really grabbed the attention of football fans across the globe.