FIFA International Match Calendar: Proposed Changes & General Discussion

How about a mini World Cup that fed into the real World Cup, a combined qualifying competition for AFC, CAF, CONCACAF and OFC?

 

A Uruguayan domestic team would be even weaker than a under-23 team, whereas a British domestic team would be nearly on par with the senior team..

 

Yeah, England/GB, Germany, Italy, and Spain would be mostly the same with just one or two exceptions. France would be alright if not at the level of the other four, probably a younger side with some Ligue 1 prospects. Portugal and the Netherlands would probably be similar to France.

There are a few others that might be more or less at the level of their senior team, Mexico would be pretty similar to their full side, Japan and South Korea as well.

 

No need to even bother with a "real world cup"

Let's just have the two top ranked teams Belgium and Brazil have a home and away playoff to determine the world champion.

 

Why even play that? You've got a 1st ranked team already. They win.

J

Certainly cuts out problems of scheduling

 

I think CAF boycotted 1966 WC for something similar to that plan.

The good old days when Apartheid-South Africa could get a bye on WC qualifiers.

 

https://apnews.com/article/coronavi...ts&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter

The threats to quit FIFA have started from Europe.

 

I think such a tournament obviously wouldn’t raise the money of a World Cup but they doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t be money there.

Just like CONCACAF throwing a Gold Cup every two years because they want the money from doing so.

And the Mexican interest isn’t in paying for those matches, it’s in paying for matches that involve Mexico, for which there would be tons of interest.

And what would be attractive to a team like Mexico is they would legitimately be one of the favorites to win such a tournament. There’s only a handful of teams who are capable of winning a World Cup and none of them would be here. You’d actually have a much more wide open tournament in terms of the different number of teams who would have a realistic chance to win.

There is some value to such a tournament even if it’s not World Cup level.

 

They could just not play in the extra cup if they feel that strongly about it.

 

It would be a great tournament, valuable in many ways, including giving us not only a sense of which sides are the best in the world outside UEFA/CONMEBOL but how the other confederations really compare to one another in strength and giving them each a great chance to improve further. The tournament will frankly be the most beneficial to two confederations in particular, namely CAF and the AFC, while presenting two CONCACAF sides (Mexico and the US) which aren't going to win the World Cup the chance to win a much more valuable trophy than the "Gold Cup". But for CAF, it will be an opportunity to showcase the breadth of its talent, since CAF is the one confederation where you can find parity or near parity among its top 10. I wouldn't be shocked if all 8 of the CAF teams in the 32-team format I have in mind advanced to the R16. And for the AFC, this would be great opportunity for many of its teams which almost never get to play outside of the region,to get that opportunity, while the very top teams in the AFC (like those in CAF and CONCACAF) will (at least until the tournament is underway) hold their own hopes of actually winning it too..

 

I mean I think they would be fine with that, but FIFA wants them there because with UEFA the extra World Cup is much less lucrative.

They are now floating the option that they do it every two years but make it so teams can't play in consecutive World Cups. Which is also a dumb way of doing it.

https://apnews.com/article/soccer-s...ni-infantino-852c9b3684c356a427985173752ad5d0

 

Again just have a proper U21 competition with a rule that players need to be released from clubs for qualifying and the tournament propper.

 

In such a tournament you would have roughly half of the teams with a legitimate chance of winning the thing.

Anybody can say what they want, but that tournament would be very exciting.

And yes all the teams from CAF, AFC, concacaf, and Oceania would improve drastically from such competition.

Heck the FIFA arab Cup is already a step in the direction of this tournament.

 

tariq panja
@tariqpanja

For what it’s worth, my sense is the biennial World Cup idea died today. There won’t be consensus, never will be and Gianni says decision will be consensus based. Some watered down, different event now likely. Was it worth all this chaos? Reminiscent of the chaos around SoftBank

5:00 PM · Oct 20, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

 

Apparently, UEFA commissioned a study which concluded a biennial WC would cost European football about 3bn euros/year.

I think we need to look at things from the opposite direction. Earlier this year Irvin Khoza - who chaired the 2010 WC LOC - said at a round-table discussion in South Africa hosted by CAF that the biggest problem facing African football was exploiting its commercial potential because most of the football revenue in Africa flows to Europe in the form of the purchase of broadcasting rights. I am sure this is reflective of general economic norms where resources are transfered from Africa to elsewhere in the world.

The bottom line is that the football economy - even if it still has scope to grow - is not infinite and if football in Africa, in particular, is to develop then the amount of money flowing from the continent to Europe must be significantly reduced and instead invested within the continent. That would obviously be detrimental to European football, at least economically.

How do you solve this problem?

I think this - more than any other consideration - is the backdrop to the discussion about changing WC cycles to 2 years because it offered a way for FIFA to eat into Europe's revenues and therefore help to reduce the economic gap between Europe and the rest of the world.

 

I’d be curious in learning more how this works in practice.

How much money is flowing from Africa to Europe and for what purpose?

For instance to the extent that there is TV money going from Africa for the World Cup TV rights for Africa, that is going to TV broadcasters to FIFA, not UEFA. Is CAF not getting its fair share of that money from FIFA?

Or is the argument that CAF is selling its TV rights to European companies and not getting ample money back in return? I can’t imagine those rights have much viewership in Europe but I’d be interested in learning if they are undervalued.

Or is the argument that there’s a ton of TV money going to UEFA for the Euro Cup and Champions League and that Europe should sell these rights to Africa for less than market value? And how is it any different from what happens in other regions when it comes to buying these rights (like for instance the United States).

The reason FIFA wants to have a World Cup every two years is because they want to try and capture the revenue that UEFA is getting via the Euro Cup. Their problem is that UEFA doesn’t play ball and declines to participate as they are saying, that revenue is not there to be had.

I guess I don’t see anything wrong with Europe’s position that they will not be forced into playing a World Cup every two years just so FIFA can have a cash grab.

 

Thinking back to the idea of reforming the Olympic football tournament. Why not use the Olympics as a means to promote the best teams from AFC, CAF, CONCACAF, and OFC. You would have the semifinalists from the the Gold Cup, AFC Asian cup, African Cup of Nations and the winner of the OFC Nations Cup, and the last winner of the Copa America could qualify. So that would already be 14 teams. OFC, UEFA, and conmebol would have one team qualify including the hosts so then it would still be 16 teams. Teams from CONCACAF, AFC, CAF, and OFC everyone would bring their best players. The team from South America would have to bring a squad of domestic players. And I was thinking that the team that could represent UEFA would be the highest ranked team that missed out on that years European Championship. So based on the FIFA rankings I think that team was Serbia. This could be a solution to give the top teams from non UEFA and south America confederations to shine on a somewhat "global stage". Plus the Olympics is still a big event and even when its u-23 it still gets a lo of viewership on TV/Stadiums. The only way this could work is if the IOC and FIFA could work out a deal. And if the upcoming European season could start in late august instead. I'm just writing some thoughts down but in theory my proposal of a reformed Olympic format would help the nations outside the big two confederations. But stated in earlier posts this probably wouldn't happen since IOC and FIFA tend to have a messy relationship.

So based on that the 2020 Olympic Football Tournament would be:

CONCACAF:
USA
Mexico
Haiti
Jamaica

CAF:
Algeria,
Nigeria
Tunisia
Senegal

AFC:
Qatar
Japan(Already Hosts)
UAE
Iran
South Korea(Highest Ranked Team that was knocked out in the quarterfinals of the AFC Cup)

OFC:
New Zealand

UEFA;
Serbia

Conmebol:
Brazil(Squad would have to be domestic players)

You could definitely say that a team outside Europe and South America could win this tournament. And this can help these teams with rankings when it comes to seeing in World Cups.

 

I do agree when it comes to funding for teams especially in Africa. However most of these African FAs are corrupt. Just look at what happened to Ghana in 2018 and in with the Nigerian FA at the moment. So I don't really see their point lol

 

Why would FIFA give all that revenue to the IOC?

 

Yeah that's why I said it's unlikely but I would like to see it.

 

Unfortunately it’s FAs everywhere who are corrupt, I don’t think it’s limited to any confederation. Hence my skepticism that FIFA is going to actually use the increased revenues to actually grow the game.

 

Yeah I agree I mean from the stuff we've seen they keep majority of the money to themselves and don't distribute it to the players, teams, and organizations that need it.