FIFA International Match Calendar: Proposed Changes & General Discussion

Qatar also threw alot of money CONCACAF's way in order to participate in the Gold Cup.

 

I will say I don't think it's clear that France is going to be on board. https://www.getfootballnewsfrance.com/2021/lfp-officially-opposes-a-world-cup-every-2-years/

To be fair I'd be on board with a 32 team Confed Cup type tournament absent UEFA + CONMEBOL (though I also do think as far as the US or Jamaica are concerned there's also the option of playing in permanently expanded Copa America). Interestingly FIFA has also mentioned the idea of looking into some kind of global Nations League concept.

I guess I just don't think a second World Cup is going to do much to correct that imbalance. No matter what anyone does, Europe is always going to have the first mover advantage, and I don't think it's possible for people to ever catch up. Not to say that other countries can't have successful and thriving domestic leagues, just that that as long as the best players in the world play in Europe, it's always going to be the place that has the majority of the world's soccer revenues. And even within Europe there seems to be an increasing financial disparity between the EPL and everyone else.

The capital is obviously very important if it's spent the right way, and more broadly I'm very much on board with the idea of growing the game across the world. I'd be curious about how that money is currently being spent and what the plans for the additional revenue are. Based on their most recent budget, it looks like about 27 percent of their spending or about $1.7 billion is being spent on what they call their FIFA Forward Program (which appears the be the main vehicle for growing the game in underfunded areas). FIFA gives some background how the kinds of projects this is spent on, but I'd be interested in learning more.

I mean I don't think we disagree about how far behind some of these countries are, and how they don't really have the funds to do anything about it. I guess I just think that even the revenue from a second World Cup isn't going to get you there.

The article you cited in a previous post said that something like 2/3 of countries do not have a professional mens league. How much would it cost to stand up a domestic league in these countries? While also correcting the imbalances that exist in many of the remaining countries who do have a domestic league. Though I do think there are ways of being creative on this front. For instance instead of each Caribbean country having its own domestic league, you could have a joint Caribbean league, which is much more sustainable I think.

I feel like the potential for growing the game in any particular country is some combination of 1) population, 2) investment in soccer, and 3) soccer culture/know how. With the third point probably being the most important, but also the hardest to quantify or learn. There's also some element of the countries who are the best at soccer have been the ones who have been playing in it the longest with a continued level of sustained investment.

Basically though, I don't know the answer, other than I think the biannual World Cup will not solve the problem and will have the added effect of devaluing the World Cup itself. This is a good illustration of my thinking https://www.theringer.com/soccer/20...world-cup-champions-league-expansion-scarcity. More broadly I do think we are running all the top players into the ground with the amount of games we keep piling on and asking them to play.

 

True.

 

I saw Infantino's press conference .... satire at its best!

"this is all because of football, it is absolutely not because of money"

 

That's what I said:

My argument is that unity is not a foregone conclusion. We don't know where France really stands and we don't know if there are other potential defectors. Maybe UEFA will fully unite with France fully in line against FIFA, maybe it will not - the chapter hasn't been written yet. And until it is, any talk about FIFA needing to survive absent all of CONMEBOL + UEFA is premature.

That isn't the goal. Nobody arguing against financial inequities is expecting the gap to shut completely. We aren't stupid, we know there's just no reality in which Europe is not the center of the football world. The best clubs, best players, best pay, best coaches and best leagues + history/pedigree will always be there. The rest of the world isn't going to leapfrog that.

The goal is simply to make the gap smaller, and get us to a point where things may not be equal, but those outside the center of power at least have the basics covered in a way they do not now. That doesn't require matching European revenue, but it does require increasing the revenue accessible to those outside the European center of power. This biennial world cup proposal, like it or not, would do exactly that.

A fully professional mens league is a high bar. Start lower.

Many national programs can't afford charter flights, cannot pay fully professional staff and administrators, cant fund even basic developmental football domestically, can't sustain even the most rudimentary academy system, cant afford even a single quality pitch that can endure the elements, etc, etc, etc.

In short, most countries struggle to keep the lights on an do fundamental things that are taken for granted in places like the USA, England, or even Canada. Some of that is due to corruption. Most of that is due to a simple lack of capital. The money just isn't there. The article partially explained why.

Solving these basic issues, alone, and allowing even poor nations with limited football pedigree to do all of the basic things above consistently, would make a massive difference. And, to be abundantly clear, that is the actual goal.

The objective is not equality with European revenue - that is not realistic and no, the biennial World Cup will not make it realistic in the future. The goal is simply to raise the floor of the game to a point where even poorer nations can handle the basics.

Again, will this eliminate inequity? No. When jamaica goes to face the USMNT, we will still be facing a USMNT with much more resources than we have, better paid + trained staff, better infrastructure, etc. But at a bare minimum, we and the other 100+ nations in a similar boat will not have to go into such matchups with amateur levels of administration, logistics, and training/preparation. We'll get at least basic professional levels of competence in all of those areas. That's a fairer fight. That's the goal.

The biennial world cup proposal unquestionably would solve this problem. We are talking about an additional ~$4B in revenue over a 4 year cycle. If even a quarter of that is distributed to more cash poor federations (directly or indirectly in the form of reimbursement for air travel, stipends for vetted professional staff, construction projects, etc), we're talking ~$4M+ per four year cycle in additional capital per nation. With that amount of money, the problems I've described above are largely taken care of. And, again, that makes a very big difference for these poorer or smaller (or both) nations.

So, the question we need to be asking here is not whether the biennial world cup proposal will get smaller federations where we want to be financially. It will, that's not disputable. An extra $4M+ over the course of a 4 year WC cycle is enough, and that is merely the floor of what a biennial proposal would yield for each country.

The actual question we are dealing with here is whether that goal is worth the disruption to tradition, traditional international calendars, existing tournaments, and revenues/structures in the established centers of football power (read: Europe's clubs, leagues, and tournaments) that would be required to achieve it via the biennial tournament. In other words, do we want to see the 4 year cycle, which we have grown accustomed to and which has been hardwired tradition for nearly a century, disappear and deal with the consequences of the world's best club, league and confederational competitions (plus players and coaches) adapting to that, in addition to enhanced frequency "devaluing" the tournament?

For you and many other fans, the answer to that question is no. And that's fine - we definitely disagree, vehemently, but I can respect the answer. But let's just be clear on what the question actually is. The question is not whether the proposal will get what is desired for those who support it, it's whether or not the price is worth it. It's not worth it for you.

So, given that this is the answer for you and many other fans (as well as UEFA, CONMEBOL, etc), the question is what are the alternatives? Is there another way to find some money to close the gap as I described above? You seem open to the idea of a 32 team confed cup. This is, as I said, a start.

That confed cup will be less lucrative than a World Cup. But, if it is to the World Cup what the Europa League is to the Champions League, it might get us ~1/5th the revenue of the big event. Assuming the 2026 WC projections of ~$7B are close enough to reality, that's perhaps $1.2-$1.4B. Not bad - this is a decent pool of money to work with.

If a portion of these revenues are set aside for development, as is the case with the WC itself, we could maybe get each cash poor confederation an extra $1M per four year cycle. Not as effective in nixing the basic issues described above as $4M would be, but still, quite significant - it would help a lot.

The real kicker here would be qualification and payouts to participating teams. Each team at WC 2018 received $8M simply for appearing. Teams at the 2026 tournament will earn somewhat more than that - I'm conservatively guestimating around $10M per side, based on projected revenue increases for 2026 and for 2022 as well.

Could you get about 1/5th of that to each team that makes the new Confed Cup? If so, that's another $2M for sides that are able to qualify for this tournament - which, by virtue of the 32 team format + absence of UEFA + CONMEBOL, many smaller teams would (we can talk about allocations later, but I'm thinking 10 + 10 + 10 + 2 for Asia, Africa, CONCACAF and OFC, and the continental championships of each confed can work as qualifying).

Combine that with the already expanded 48 team WC, which is also more accessible to some of these teams and whose boosted revenue will still flow to those on the outside, and you've got an interesting picture. Almost all teams will still be getting at least an extra $1M every 4 years over the status quo, and many teams would, by virtue of qualification to the Confed Cup and maybe the expanded WC in some cycles, net an extra $~2M or so...bringing us closer to the $~4M the biennial proposal could bring in my scenario above.

It's not as lucrative as the 2nd WC - the FIFA distributions to poorer nations are just going be smaller due to the Confed Cups lower revenue, so we can't match those automatic $4M+ grants the 2nd WC might generate over a four year cycle. But we can get everyone $1M+, and additionally get some teams another $2M if they can qualify for the new Confed Cup.

That's significant. Smaller countries get some of the revenue inequity relief they want, and traditional powers + the fans who support them get to keep the World Cup as it is. Win-win, maybe.

If we're going to insist on shutting down the biennial proposal, then what I described above is how we should be talking.

Links below for sources on some of the numbers.

https://www.goal.com/en-us/news/wor...ners-get-countries-/h9rstxkx3z6k1c8eonct5g1xa

https://www.sportico.com/leagues/soccer/2021/fifa-world-cup-proposal-revenue-1234643537/

https://www.marca.com/en/football/champions-league/2021/05/04/60919d4146163f98478b46f9.html

Unfortunately, this has been proven difficult to work in the past. The travel costs between the islands tend to undermine financial viability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean_Professional_Football_League

You would need a committed TV partner from the jump willing to put at least ~$15-20M/season, and that's a big ask.

That being said, you're correct to note that cross-border leagues are an answer for smaller nations with markets too small to sustain professional leagues independently. I would go bigger than you did, and push for an MLS style league with ~32 teams covering the Caribbean and parts of Central America. That could net $35-45M/season, which would be enough to sustain a level of professionalism at the level MLS was at 15 years ago - a very high level for most of the region. That'd do tremendous good.

Such a proposal would have a very good chance of following the path of the ill-fated Super League, however. You could evade that at least partially by keeping pro/rel and perhaps merging league tiers across countries, but that gets messy. No easy answers here.

Another possible solution is to simply expand existing professional leagues into the region from North America. The USL has done this before in Antigua and Puerto Rico. This is a decent roundabout way to get some of the (admittedly limited at the USL level) broadcast money into the less affluent regions. The challenge here is finding the right conditions to field franchises in the region - the right ownership groups, decent fields, etc. Can get a bit messy, as can the travel costs, but there's hope there.

That list is pretty accurate. The biennial proposals help with 2), and indirectly 3) (more capital can purchase you a little more know-how, although the culture is priceless).

You've touched on something quite interesting here.

If this alternative confed cup idea catches steam and proves lucrative...does CONMEBOL come knocking with a proposal to turn it into a bigger Copa America? With their weight added, the tournament would obviously become more lucrative.

That would become something to watch if this proposal comes to pass. If it were to happen, I think you consider expanding this tournament even further, perhaps to 40. And the revenue projections would increase substantially.

UEFA purists can remain blissfully separate, although they would have to make some concessions to fit this tournament into the calendar.

The answer if we aren't doing a 2nd World Cup is the 32 (or more) team confed cup idea. The status quo isn't acceptable to the vast majority of the world, and the only way to improve that situation for said countries is to get more cross-confederation football. If that doesn't come in the form of a 2nd WC, it has to come in the form of some other tournament that can drive revenue to the nations outside of the European center of power.

There's no option to simply remain at the status quo here - that's not acceptable, and fans who love "scarcity" above all else are going to have to accept that at some point. The rest of the world can't sit still and simmer just because some folks in more established places just can't accept the existence of additional football they don't even have to watch. They rest of the world is going to their fairer share, one way or another.

 

Fascinating reading, thank you.

Meanwhile, at its annual meeting yesterday, the Association of European Leagues also rejected the proposal for biennial WCs and any significant changes to the Int'l Match Calendar.

FIFA's proposals to reshape the international calendar have all been firmly rejected by European Leagues, which includes the Premier League, EFL and SPFL among its members.

A consultation on men's national team football led by former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, now FIFA's chief of global football development, is proposing a major international tournament every June, longer but fewer in-season international breaks and mandatory player rest periods.

European Leagues managing director Jacco Swart said the proposals created a "severe shift" in the balance between club and national team football in sporting terms and in economic value.


He rejected outright any change in frequency of the World Cup or continental finals like the Euros, and said rest periods should be determined at domestic level.

Swart also said there should be "as limited changes as possible" to the in-season international breaks.

Representatives of the leagues expressed their views directly to Wenger in a call on Thursday, while FIFA has also been consulting with national team coaches this week.

The renewed opposition from European Leagues comes in a week where the prospect of biennial World Cups becoming a reality appeared to wane.

It had been expected that member associations would vote on the plans at an extraordinary FIFA Congress before the end of the year. FIFA has instead called a global summit for December 20 where it hopes to present a "consensus" on the calendar, but likely without any vote.

Reaching a consensus in two months seems ambitious, with FIFA president Gianni Infantino describing himself as a referee in the middle of a "riot" in a press conference on Wednesday and calling on everyone involved to be "calm and rational".

Infantino admitted "everything is open" in terms of what that consensus position might look like.

The PA news agency understands a meeting between UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin, European Club Association chair Nasser Al Khelaifi and International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach was held on Friday.

Their organisations have all expressed concern over FIFA's plans.

(SkySports)

 

One thing I would like to add is that I think the European countries who are threatening to leave FIFA over the biennial WC proposal are all bluff!

There's no way that the clubs, players, fans and even governments in those countries would allow their national association to leave FIFA.

Also, I wonder whether the Confederations' Cup ideas floated in this thread - if they are eventually adopted by FIFA - would be a route to a biennia WC through the back-door? UEFA members might start to find the competition being attractive, particularly if all Conmebol members entered.

 

I suspect this as well (leaving is a nuclear option that I think isn't going to be wielded as easily as some think) but, as I keep saying, the chapter is yet to be written. We just can't be sure of anything yet.

I considered this as well. It seems distinctly possible that if we end up with the Confed Cup in place of the 2nd WC, and it does well after a pair of cycles, CONMEBOL hops on board. And if CONMEBOL is on board and it continues to do well over another couple of cycles, eventually we will get rumblings from UEFA. And at that point...we end up with a 2nd World Cup by default, just a couple of decades later than anticipated.

 

Do you have any sources where UEFA has declared their intention to withdraw from FIFA?

All reports I read say that UEFA plans to show its power in any general vote regarding Biennial WCs. No plans to leave the money-making machine that is FIFA.

 

Good to see the idea of a world tournament closed to UEFA+Conmebol members. Conmebol pro players are beholden to UEFA clubs, so no chance of their participation in a rest-of-the-world tournament.

Quick question: who would distribute ROW Cup profits amongst its AFC+CAF+Concacaf+OFC participants?

Do consider what happened to Conmebol when it participated in a cross-confederation tournament: Concacaf kept all the commercial rights profit from Copa Centenario 2016.
Conmebol is still mad at Concacaf for that debt. So, Copa America expansion is very unlikely at this time.

 

The reports were of individual European national associations threatening to leave FIFA this week, UEFA was not referred to.

 

Do you have a source for that?

 

Another way to support soccer in our
poorer countries is to give the FA's a cut of transfer fees.

Mali is an incredibly poor country but the top ten transfer fees alone for Mali players add up to €140 million (US$163M).

Mahamadou Diarra €26.00
Amadou Haidara €19.00
Yves Bissouma €16.90
Moussa Djenepo €15.70m
Diadié Samassékou €14.00m
Adama Traoré €14.00m
Seydou Keita €14.00m
Mohamed Sissoko €12.00m
Mohamed Sissoko €11.00m
Youssouf Koné €9.00m

 

I really like Wenger's plan for for two big international breaks over the season. However, the European FA's seem not on board with it

 

The problem for the big teams is that it reduces their control over player fitness.

 

100% It's funny that they are against FIFA making changes to international football but they still would want to add more games to champions league and make it hard for smaller teams to qualify/play

 

Bbbbbbbbbb bubble.

I mean if you pay a player $250k a week, you're not too happy about him disappearing for 3 weeks mid-season and coming back fatigued.

At least with the summer competitions the players have a few weeks to recover.

 

But surely this is an improvement over having to deal with said player jetting off 3, 4, maybe 5 times in season during a calendar year, often on long, taxing flights that cross timezones and also fatigue players? Having two breaks a year (with only one in-season) would seem to go a long way toward decreasing the instability international football can cause for clubs in season. Take a month, knock everything out, and then we're all set until summer.

I really thought the condensed international windows would be the one part of the FIFA proposal that the Europeans got behind for that reason, but I guess they have other ideas.

 

This is why I get annoyed with the player welfare arguments being thrown around by many who are against the FIFA proposals, almost as if to say that the opposition is in the name of player safety and health.

UEFA and the clubs don't care about player welfare. They care about their own bottomline. Whatever room on the calendar that isn't filled by FIFA proposals will be filled by new club competitions, because that's good business. UEFA and the clubs are no better than FIFA in that regard.

 

With that I must disagree.

The decision in Aoril by UEFA to expand the GSs of all three UCCs from 6 games to 10 from 2024/25 was taken after 2 years of consultation and was based on the principle that clubs in UCCs should play a ratio of 1/3-2/3 UCC-domestic games during the season. This is why Ligue 1 has already decided to reduce its size from 20 to 18 clubs from 24/25.

I also oppose FIFA's proposal to condense NT qualifying games into one (October) or two (October and March) windows because:

- firstly it would cause significant disruption to club seasons and deprive spectators of club football for an entire month or two during the season, and
- secondly because smaller countries with less squad depth would be unfairly affected if, for example, they had to play their qualifying games without a key player who happened to be injured during the condensed window of qualifying games.

 

On the second point: As a supporter of a country with very limited depth, I'll concede I did think of this. It was a risk but seemed a fair trade for more tournament football.

That said, I understand the opposition.

On the first point, what is the difference now between time missed due to international breaks and the proposed calendar? It would seem that with 4 breaks in-season clubs are enduring substantial time off as it is. Wouldn't it be more practical to just have that time split into fewer windows?

 

No, it wouldn't be.

If anyone here is as old as me (50, and of course no one is!), they would remember the days before the FIFA calendar when qualifiers and friendlies were played on multiple dates across the season, without any coordination. I think the last time this happened was for the 1994 WC.

So playing int'l games during the season has a long history and I think four dates (Sep, Oct, Nov and Mar) like we have now is about the minimum number acceptable for those of us who value the beauty of int'l soccer.

Also, without having a major tournament finals every summer, the proposal to condense the qualifiers into October doesn't make sense because the teams which don't qualify then have a year to wait before they play competitively again. That is clearly detrimental to their development.