FIFA International Match Calendar: Proposed Changes & General Discussion

Fair enough.

To be clear, for me the proposal to have fewer international calendar windows was tied to the addition of another tournament (ex: a 2nd World Cup) to allow for tournament football every summer.

Absent the addition of a 2nd WC or a large, viable alternative (ex: Confed Cup with 32 or more teams), I would definitely not support the limitation of windows. Without the added tournaments, I agree that limited windows would marginalize international football.

 

I can beat that. I attended my nations home world cup qualifier against Sth Korea in 1973 as a 12 year old. You are right about qualifiers being played without co-ordination. Players had to be released for official internationals but UEFA was the only confederation that tried to fit the games midweek when nothing else was happening. Other confederations seemed to go out of their way to make it hard for players who were playing in Europe to attend matches. European clubs were very much opposed to releasing players to attend games in our part of the world. Some actually "retired" from international football so they wouldn't be suspended by FIFA for not fronting. Lots of others had mysterious injuries that prevented them from travelling but seemed to resolve themselves by the time the club played that week. The international; calendar helped a bit, but we still had clubs who did their best through the 90's and early 2000's to prevent players from travelling. We actually played a lot of friendlies in England in those days so we could get the team together a few times, and even then had to make agreements with the clubs that some players would only play half a game or 60 minutes and then get replaced. The original windows were a bit shorter as well and some only went for 5 days (monday to friday). The windows now are a bit more sensible as they allow players to travel, recuperate a bit, then travel again and recover for their club games. With a midweek window a European player trying to get to Australia for a game had to catch a 24 hour flight to Australia, adjust to a 10 hour time shift, play a game then catch another 24 hour flight to be back at their clubs the following weekend.

 

100%

 

I support dropping the October window and expanding the March, September and November windows.

I opposse a biennal World Cup, as I oppose a biennal Euro or Copa América.

 

A slight digression, but since the int'l calendar is important in terms of globally developing soccer, I wondered whether any confederations mirror UEFA in promoting grassroots activity (which UEFA define as all non-professional football) by having a grassroots charter.

Under UEFA's charter, national associations are assessed annually and receive gold, silver, bronze or nothing.

I found out at the weekend that the AFC has such a charter for its members. Do any of the other four confederations?

 

As far as the English FA is concerned they're off to a slow start. One mission is to replace pockmarked mud pitches with artificial ones. England has installed 700 artificial pitches in 17 years, Germany is at 3,700, the US must have tens of thousands, including shared facilities.

All the charter really covers is getting kids out of the house, better playing facilities, teacher education, coaching education, girls participation and safety in sport.

I think the onus on CONCACAF should be to build facilities in poorer nations rather than focus on the US, Canada and Mexico.

 

I think the main proposal was to have only 2 expanded windows per year. Three would be way too much imo. You can fit 5 matchdays into these expanded windows so no need to have more than two of them.

 

I mean I think there are legitimate player welfare issues, but I agree that UEFA and the clubs don’t actually care about. Witness all the extra Champions Leagues games they are adding. But we are really pushing some of these players way too much in terms of the number of games they are required to play.

It’s the same reason the NBA won’t cut down the 82 game season, and the NFL is trying to go to an 18 game season. Because player welfare will always take a backseat to trying to get more revenue.

 

CONMEBOL has made official its position rejecting the idea of a World Cup every two years, saying it does not find "reasons, benefits or justification for the change promoted by FIFA."

Goes on to say the current model with nearly 100 years of history has proven to be successful. https://t.co/S9mxVvJuSw

— Jon Arnold (@ArnoldcommaJon) October 27, 2021

CONMEBOL officially comes out against the biannual World Cup.

 

I feel like CONCACAF should be 1) building up administrative capacity and capability of all their federations, 2) raising the level of refereeing, 3) helping with facilities broadly but also making sure every country has the capacity to do VAR for official competitions, and 4) working to build up the professional leagues across the federation, including looking into the idea of leagues across multiple countries.

 

Wow! It's the first time I call the Conmebol doing a bold move in the right direction.

If Infantino and Wagner don't retreat, there will be chaos.

 

As I said from the beginning, I think the 2nd scenario is the most likely.

Personally, my preference would be the first though since the expanded CWC really provides nothing for football fans that the CWC-lite doesn't already provide, which isn't much (especially for fans of the clubs that have a chance to win the CWC). It also adds considerably more fatigue on players.

Whereas the ROW cup could be something that nationals of the teams involved would get excited about and it doesn't really add many games on the players either (assuming it replaces one of CAF, CONCACAF's biennial cups). The ROW cup may also put and end to the annoying tradition of CONMEBOL inviting guest teams to play in the Copa America.

 

We need option 1. Hopefully this is the direction Infantino moves in. He had a majority vote for the biennial tournament easily, so I'd imagine this would be the preferred backup plan for those members as well and they should push for it.

 

Honestly, the whole thing just seems like a glorified International Champions Cup to me. The fact that this thing was originally going to be in China (before COVID happened) says it all to me.

Seriously, if you're a Liverpool fan (like an actual Liverpool fan who lives in Liverpool), what is the appeal of this tournament to you? Why would you want to watch Liverpool play Barcelona or Inter at some plastic stadium in Guangzhou when you can watch Liverpool play Barcelona or Inter at Anfield (or at Camp Nou or the San Siro) in the CL?

It would be like having a Basketball Club World Cup and having the Golden State Warriors play the Miami Heat in Singapore. What the hell is the point?

 

But the residents of Liverpool and Barcelona aren't the target audience. The residents of Beijing, Tokyo and Boston are.

 

Maybe I'll be proven wrong but the expanded CWC strikes me as the kind of tournament that will make some waves in the host country, but if its not being played in the country that you're living in you probably won't care much about it. Imagine, if after Chelsea beat City in the CL final last season the same 2 teams played again 3 weeks in Tokyo. Why would someone in Boston care?

 

Just to be clear though, the reduction of windows would be off set by having longer windows. This is a easy, partial solution to the fixture-congestion issue. Right now, for every int'l break we need to have these 3 dead days on both sides of it when there are no games played to give players time to travel and adjust. Just a waste of time for players since they're not playing and not really resting either. And not great for fans either, obviously. Just a really inefficient way to get 2 games in.

I don't think "only" having a FIFA break in October and March marginalizes int'l football. If anything, having these 6 dead days associated with every FIFA window does more harm to the image of int'l football (imho).

In summary, with 2 FIFA windows we are looking at 12 dead days per year and 8 matches played by each country during these windows. In the current calendar, we still only get 8 matches played but with 24 dead days.

 

Dead days for who?

Those days are used for preparation which NTs need because they do not train outside games.

I remain very opposed to the reduction of the number of int'l windows.

And what about fans? Why should season ticket holders be denied watching their club for a whole month during the season?

 

I just don't think clubs will be willing to put their elite players into someone else's hands for 3 matches post Covid. It's not a problem for major countries which can rotate starters but imagine Mo Salah playing 270 minutes for Egypt and coming back injured or exhausted.

 

A whole month? We're talking about making the int'l break 1 week longer than it currently is. In any case, season ticket holders still get to see the same number of games.

Dead days because many players have to go on 12-hour flights across multiple timezones. So there's the travel day and the recovery day(s) == waste of time.

Nobody is suggesting reducing preparation and training with the NT. In fact, training time would increase with just 2 FIFA windows because the days wasted in an airplane can be replaced with days on the training pitch.

 

The more international windows, the more air travel. That's not good.

 

I traveled to London in first class using air- miles. I slept like a baby on a comfortable flat bed. Ironically sleeping most of the way seemed like a waste of the facilities.

 

I assumed these 3 matchday FIFA windows were a very temporary thing and we will revert back to 2 once WC qualifying process has caught-up to where it needs to be (its already down to 2 matchdays in both UEFA and CONMEBOL this week).

I sure hope that is the case.

^ And then you were forcibly woken up at 3:00am (body time).

I mean, when I travel first class I look forward to it at least a week in advance. Fun times!
But for players who live in luxury at all times, flying long distances is just a waste of time. Stating the obvious here, but they can't do their job from an airplane and likely can't do it as well even the next day or two (depending how far the trip is). There have been plenty of studies on this showing that people can't focus at normal capacity even when just trying to adjust to a 1-hour time change.