FIFA International Match Calendar: Proposed Changes & General Discussion

At the same time as 2 higher quality, more popular and prestigious tournaments?

I think it will be a bit reminiscent of the Club World Cup in December when we have Champions League matchday 6 and big league matches happening all day, and then at 4:00 in the morning you have Al-Sadd v Hienghene Sport in the CWC.

 

Iran v Egypt would be quite interesting, seeing how long-time former Iran coach, Carlos Queiroz is coaching Egypt now.

Most of the groups would be alright, but Group H looks terribly weak without any CAF teams, with 2 AFC teams , along with Jamaica and Solomon Islands! Take Ghana from Iran's group (which has two CAF teams) and put them in Group H and put Jamaica as the pot 3 side in Iran's group instead. That would even out the groups a bit more. And let China host instead of the US.

 

The schedule is fine. The same way that most Asian, African and Concacaf fans are glued to their own WC qualifiers and not so much more "prestigious' WC qualifiers in Europe and S.A taking place around the same time, they will be following their own national teams and what their prospects in this tournament. The audience for the tournament, however, won't be the same as the ones glued to the EURO or Copa America.

 

The euro and copa don't even take place at the same time. I think the Copa started pretty much as the euro ended. And the gold cup was after the copa too, so these things could be scheduled as much as possible not to overlap other tournaments.

Anyways not really a fan of the club world cup, if I had my way I'd scrap that and have this tourney in a non euro copa year, but if that's they way it has to be so be it. And if it has to take place partially during one of the other tournaments, as you say nor really a big deal. The fan bases of those teams will watch no matter what.

And this tourney doesn't have to beat the euro, copa in terms of viewership and revenue, it simply has to beat the biennial gold cup or afcon on their own, and this tournament certainly would.

 

Another positive about this ROW tournament would be that clubs would only lose African players in January for afcon once every 4 years instead of 2.

CAF played its last afcon in the summer to avoid the club conflict, but most countries in Africa have rainy seasons in the summer months which would have a terrible effect on afcon so they reverted back to January.

The ROW tourney would be held in summer, and frankly the only African nations with the infrastructure to ever host this event don't have rainy summers. So you'd be looking at either South Africa, or the North African countries.

Possible hosts

USA
Mexico
Japan
Korea
Australia
China
South Africa
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
UAE
Morocco
Egypt

 

Honestly I feel like we could just reuse the name and call it the Confederations Cup.

 

There always has to be some overlap as the summer isn't long enough to avoid it. In the case of 2021, Copa and Euro overlapped perfectly (the finals were on the same weekend) but, yeah, Gold Cup started just as those 2 were ending.

 

"The FIFA President's Offshore Bank Account Cup."

 

The Copa and Euro actually overlapped almost entirely. The Copa America Final was on July 10th and the Euro Final was on July 11th. And the tournaments both started on the same day.

The Gold Cup only happened after because CONCACAF had to complete the final round of qualifying, and also needed time to finish the Nations League. And the the Gold Cup was a worse tournament because of the later start because it meant that a number of top players sat it out, because it conflicted with the European club preseason.

 

The Gold Cup should have started on July 2nd but they postponed it by 8 days.

Normally it's played in a year apart from the Euros.

 

Yeah you're right about the Copa and Euro running at the same time I forgot. It was just that they were at different times of the day.

 

The argument is that large amounts of capital flow from poorer countries in Africa, the Caribbean, asia, etc to Europe for TV rights to European leagues and tournaments, sponsorship, merchandise, etc, and that money is therefore not invested domestically. Given how small some of these economies are, the outflow has a significant impact, and it's hard to envision growth without correcting some of that impact and reversing at least a significant portion of that cash flow.

There's an ESPN article that touched on this, and I think explained the problem pretty succinctly. I'll post the relevant quote, and bold the best portions:

A biennial world cup is one pretty clear way to reverse this flow somewhat. Opponents of this plan have to find other ways to do the same thing, because that's the underlying problem people are trying to solve. These countries can't force the flow to reverse and compel local sources of capital to cease distributing cash abroad and keep it at home - the only way forward is to create a product that provides a legitimate draw for some of that money on par with the draw of foreign leagues/European tournaments/etc. That product has to be competitive international football.

So far, the best idea I've heard is the B-team world cup idea, but even that pales financially to the impact of a second world cup due to the fact that it'll draw so much less respect and attention, especially if it's held in Copa/Euro years as proposed earlier in this thread. Maybe that inferior financial viability is still enough to make a difference, but it's not hard to see which path the bulk of the world's federations would prefer and why.

 

Exactly.

That's debatable.

 

This proposal, for example, is trash and part of the problem when I mention that there is a dearth of suitable alternatives being promoted.

This guy wants a 16 team Confed Cup-style tournament as an alternative compromise. Smaller nations want a second WC, which at 48 teams provides them lots of additional capital and access.

In place of this, the "compromise" is a much smaller, much more exclusive tournament that is harder to qualify for than the expanded World Cup itself and, given its small size and the lack of UEFA + CONMEBOL teams, offers a fraction of the revenue potential.

So these smaller nations don't get the competitive opportunities they need from this tournament, and far less of the capital that they need. And this is supposed to be acceptable?

This "compromise" tournament would need to START at 32 teams to even begin to be passable as an alternative. Anything smaller than that and you're not even close to the revenue + access needed to begin reversing the financial disparities in the game that people are trying to solve. And the "compromisers" aren't even willing to do that. It shows just how little most opponents of these changes really understand about the motivations for all of these proposals. None of their solutions even come close to solving the problem.

 

I don't see how unless we argue that corruption at the national levels is so great that none of the capital gets back to these countries anyway. And I just don't see any real life evidence for such an argument. Corruption is an issue, but this isn't 2001 with Jack Warner running CONCACAF into the ground. Money is getting where it needs to go more than it ever has, and that can be improved on even further.

 

The biennial World Cup proposal requires reducing non-World Cup international windows to a single month of qualifiers. That's at most 8 matches each. Having less matches (and possibly even less home matches) will certainly discourage local sponsors.

 

I think the issue is UEFA has all the leverage. I think the threats to leave FIFA are real, and it’s enough that FIFA seems to be backing away from the every two years idea. Even if they have the votes, they can force through something that’s going to lead to the confederation that’s the biggest driver of their revenue leaving FIFA.

And the question is in the absence of UEFA and CONMEBOL how to salvage something of value. And the idea of the compromise tournament is exactly that, just an idea. It can be modified to the extent that it satisfies people. And yeah it doesn’t have the same revenue potential but it’s a starting place and would have plenty of room for growth.

 

I mean I think corruption is soccer is pretty endemic across a whole host of confederations and at FIFA themselves. I also just don’t think the money is going where it needs to be or that it’s being invested in ways that will help grow the game. I also think a number of confederations are poorly run and generally lack the needed administrative capacity.

I don’t think it’s as bad as it was in CONCACAF, largely due to the DOJ investigation. And because everything in CONCACAF has a US nexus, I’m sure the DOJ is going to continue to keep an eye on things. But that still doesn’t solve all the potential corruption issues, and doesn’t really apply elsewhere.

 

They don't have all of the leverage. That requires locked in unity. They don't have that unity, at least not yet.

I think we've touched on this before in another thread, but it's not a given that UEFA and CONMEBOL act as a united bloc on this.

If CONMEBOL gives in to FIFA moneyball and even a few defectors join France in supporting the biennial tournament, UEFA loses a good chunk of the leverage they have.

Maybe this doesn't happen and UEFA is able to successfully scuttle the biennial tournament. But that chapter has not been written yet.

Fair enough, but we need serious ideas. A 16 team "confed cup" is not a compromise, it's a joke and will just harden any resistance of any sort of compromise that is serious.

 

I get that but that's also not an Africa specific issue. It exists everywhere. Think of all the money that goes from US broadcasters for the TV rights for European soccer. Right now the EPL is discussing a deal of 3 billion pounds for the EPL TV rights (over 9 years). Similarly, La Liga is getting 120 million pounds a year, the Champions League 100 million pounds, Serie A 50 million pounds, and the Bundesliga 25 million pounds a year. Obviously if all that money was being instead invested in MLS, you'd see a way higher quality MLS. But there's nothing you can do about it as around the world everyone wants to watch the highest quality leagues and those are in Europe. And they are obviously going to sell their rights for whatever the market can bear.

The problem is 1) a huge number of the world's federations are not good enough and would probably never qualify for a World Cup, even if it were every two years and involved 48 teams, 2) you need Europe and CONMEBOL to participate for the revenue to be there and they clearly aren't in, and 3) even with the increased revenue I don't think its enough to improve soccer in the way you are talking about in all these countries.

At the end of the day, you're not going to succeed in forcing Europe in playing in another World Cup if is adamantly against doing so. It's also the case that just throwing money at soccer isn't necessarily enough. Look at China and what's happening there. There has definitely been a serious effort to invest in the sport, but it hasn't worked out that well.

 

Well I have no idea about CONMEBOL, and the relevant players there are Argentina and Brazil. But I think Europe is fairly unified on this, especially if the reports from the most recent call are true. Let me put it this way, if the Faeroe Islands is willing to publicly say that they are going to consider leaving FIFA if this happens, then that sentiment is definitely very widespread across UEFA. As obviously they are not going to be one of the countries driving this.

 

UEFA is obviously fairly unified, that's not the issue. The issue is how firm is that unity. If it's just Ukraine and Belarus going with FIFA on this then sure, not much to be said - FIFA is done. But if its France, Ukraine, Romania, the Kazakhs, and maybe half a dozen other lower/middling players in UEFA who are willing to break? And CONMEBOL also plays moneyball with FIFA? This is a different story.

And when the president of the French FA comes out and publicly signals that they may support the biennial proposal, we can't discount that story as a possibility. At least, not yet. That's pretty much all I'm saying. It's clearly not a foregone conclusion, although I totally understand why many want it to be (this biennial proposal seems to really, REALLY bother some folks on a personal level, which I don't get but will at least respect).

The quote I provided did mention MLS, so I know it's not an Africa specific issue. It impacts most of the world outside of Europe. My point is that it's not a problem we can keep waving away, as entirely too many who are opposed to this proposal seem keen to do. If we're not going to embrace the 2nd WC as a revenue driver to correct these imbalances, then there needs to be an alternative that at least makes an attempt to do so. The status quo isn't acceptable is all I'm saying.

These other confeds will fight for that 2nd WC but failing that, a 32 team Confed Cup absent UEFA + CONMEBOL would be a start.

Agree on point 1 (probably about ~70 or so nations who just don't have a realistic chance of qualifying ever), agree on point 2 (that's a part of why a 16 team "compromise" is such a bad idea - you need a much bigger tournament to cover the gravity removed by UEFA and CONMEBOL), firmly disagree on point 3 (the revenue would make a substantial difference in the vast majority of these nations, who are starting from a much, MUCH lower place than I think most fans of wealthier nations fully appreciate).

And, we've been over this so won't repeat, but my agreement on point 2 is a bit conditional pursuant to the unity issues I discussed above. We don't actually know yet that both UEFA + CONMEBOL are out each in their entirety - as I said, that chapter's not written yet.

Money isn't everything, but it is a lot. This becomes very clear when it is absent.

I didn't call money a panacea or a guarantee of success. But I think you're underselling how important capital is to any development of the game outside of Europe or CONMEBOL going forward. The cash flow issue has to be addressed, or nothing's going to change. That's just the reality as I see it.

 

With Qatar playing in the Gold Cup and even having AFC referees participate in the Gold Cup. It seems like AFC and Concacaf have a good relationship. I was thinking that AFC and Concacaf should have a sixteen team tournament the year before the world cup. It could have the quarterfinalists of both the previous gold cup and afc cup. The competition could be played in the US. Maybe call it the "continental" Cup

 

I mean, if you go and do that why not also include Africa and the OFC?

 

Qatar played in the Gold Cup after dropping out of Copa America.