FIFA International Match Calendar: Proposed Changes & General Discussion

I remain strongly opposed to reducing the number of int'l windows because as stated above it only works if you have a major tournament every summer.

For the countries that do not qualify for the finals there is a 12-month interval between competitive games, which is unacceptable.

Also, it is inappropriate to suspend club football for an entire month as the season is up and running.

Travel is only an issue for players travelling between continents which is a small minority of int'l players.

The European leagues requested FIFA to make as minimal changes to the post-2024 calendar as possible.

 

To be clear, I think there are two options to the "Wenger plan". One of which has 2 FIFA windows during the season (October and March) instead of the current four. And in that case, they wouldn't be a month long. Two weeks max.

Presumably that still leaves open June for players of NTs that are not involved in a major tournament (but there would be a major tournament pretty much every summer, if you consider the expanded CWC "major").

 

The CWC isn't a tournament involving national teams, so I don't think it'd satisfy the annual summer tournament criteria as we're framing it here. We're talking about major international tournaments between nations. A rest of the world cup would do the trick, as do the Copas, Euros, and obviously the World Cup, etc, but an expanded CWC is about clubs, not nations.

If we're not getting a 2nd WC, and we are reducing international windows, we need a major tournament between national teams (not clubs) every summer.

 

Too true.

I was once lucky enough to travel business class Dubai to Sydney in an Emirates A-380. You haven't lived until you've spent 12 hours straight in an open bar at 40,000 feet. I had some amazing conversations - doctors developing trans-species organ transplants, an air hostess on her last tour of duty before retiring to Hainan to run a sports bar with her boyfriend, a guy who claimed he has been booked on MH380 and stayed an extra day in Malaysia and international sporting officials (David Gallop and Paul Reiffel were on the flight).

J

 

Fair enough - CWC doesn't count in that way. But it still eats-up time and getting rid of these 12 unnecessary "dead days" would help alleviate the increased fixture congestion that either the CWC or ROW WC would create (today being one of those 12 days )

 

I'm pretty sure that Bolivia national team players don't travel on first class.

 

Really? I would be astonished if they did not.

 

Several South American national teams use charter flights during FIFA windows, the Bolivian team included.
https://www.paginasiete.bo/campeone...ru-con-26-jugadores-sin-fernandez-314695.html

Of course, we are talking about Conmebol here... the Argentinian team used to share a shoddy charter airplane that crashed in Colombia, which killed the Chapecoense club squad... more than a year after South American FA execs were extradited to the United States for fraud.

Wherever there is money to be siphoned, South American FA execs will be there lining their pockets.

 

I am currently thinking about what CONMEBOL will do for Qualifying after this cycle.

This may have been mentioned in other threads by other people so bear with me.

I don't know if they will do this and it all depends on the World Cup every two years decision...
...but what I would do is two groups of five teams.
Top two teams automatically qualify.
Then third place plays fourth place of the other group (Home-&-Away) for the other two slots.

 

They would be better off just allowing Argentina and Brazil to qualify automatically, and having two 4-team groups play for the other four spots.....would reduce things to six match days.....

 

The other 8 Conmebol members will need to be monetarily compensated for lost revenue, after being prohibited from facing ARG and/or BRA in qualifiers.

That is why 80% of Conmebol refuses to split qualifiers into groups, as they will miss playing one of their biggest revenue-making home matches.

 

No doubt.

But with the WC expanding to 48 teams, there are going to be a bunch of big names that are 99% certain to qualify.

And with FIFA trying to reduce international window, a logical course of action would be to change qualifying formats so that 4-team groups (which require only six matchdays) become the dominant format.

CONMEBOL isn't going to need to play 18 matchdays just to eliminate four countries for WC 2026.

You'll face a similar situation in CONCACAF, where the chances of the US & Mexico not qualifying for six spots is virtually non-existent.

 

With the World Cup expanding to 48 teams in 2026, and FIFA trying to reduce the number of matchdays/windows, it is time to allow merit-based qualifying, in which countries could qualify through past performance?

For example, let's say you implemented a system in which the eight quarterfinalists from the previous World Cup and the current champions of each of the five major federations all qualified automatically.

That would have seen 11 countries qualifying automatically out of the 31 available spots:

WC 18 quarterfinalists (8): France, Belgium, Russia, Croatia, Sweden, England, Brazil, and Uruguay:

Continental champions (3): Italy (UEFA 2020), Mexico (2019 Gold Cup), Algeria (2019 Cup of Nations).

Brazil (2019 Copa America) and Qatar (2019 Asian Cup) would have already qualified via other methods.

If you expand the idea to accommodate a 48-team World Cup by including all countries which reached the R16 at WC2018, and all finalists from continental championships then you get:

WC 18 R-16 teams (16): France, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Switzerland, Russia, Croatia, Sweden, England, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay, Mexico, and Japan.

Continental finalists (5): Italy (UEFA 2020 champion), USA (2019 Gold Cup runner-up), Peru (2019 Copa America runner-up), Algeria (2019 Cup of Nations champion), Senegal (2019 Cup of Nations runner-up)

So 21 out of the 48 spots would be already accounted for.....

Thoughts?

 

Ton of lost revenue for both TV rights and ticket sales.

The English FA made £263 million in broadcasting revenue, $71 million in event revenue and $63 million in sponsorship in 2019. They wouldn't get anything like that for a bunch of friendlies.

 

Understood.

But you can't have it both ways.....you can't reduce the number of international matches while still earning the same amount of money from them.

Either you keep the bloated international match calendar for financial reasons or you accept a reduced number of matches and reduced revenue from them.

Or you run the players into the ground and watch more and more of them miss important matches/tournaments due to injury.

At some point, the players are going to take the issue into their own hands by refusing call-ups for games against minnows. England could probably field a lineup of entirely Championship players and still beat Andorra and San Marino by multiple goals. And those France-Kazhakstan, Germany-Liechtenstein, and Holland-Gibraltar qualifying matches were thrillers!

Heck, the US won the Gold Cup this year despite resting many of their key players....both the US and Mexico could likely handle 80% of CONCACAF teams with their B squads.

 

Remember that federations make most of their income from soccer internationals. They don't care about running players into the ground. And players can't turn down international callups, even if they're injured, unless they retire from international soccer altogether and miss out on the glamor.

 

That makes sense once the team is together in a chosen location somewhere in South America, but how would a charter work in getting players to South America in the first place (from Europe or Asia)?

If not first class then at least business. No way they are flying coach. lol

 

[QUOTE="mfw13, post: 40078295, member: 31591"
CONMEBOL isn't going to need to play 18 matchdays just to eliminate four countries for WC 2026. [/quote]

Especially since there are only 3 being eliminated.

Its a shame they have to change it since I find the 8-team OCT very interesting. Pretty much every match seems to be quite important.

Anyway, CONCACAF has until 2027 to decide because not much changes before then (they will still have 3.5 spots up for grabs in qualifying for the 2026 WC)

 

Is there an allocation published for 2026?

Generally, for a 48 team WC, I think I would go:
Host Nations: 1 (if co-host then other host nations are pulled from the Confederation's allocation)
OFC - 1.5
AFC - 6 + 2 x .5
CAF - 7.5
EUFA - 17 + 2 x .5
CONCACAF - 5 + 2x.5
CONMEBOL - 6 + 2x.5

And, that requires 5 IC playoffs.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_FIFA_World_Cup#Qualification

 

England's 10-0

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win

today makes you think that maybe UEFA should reorganize its qualifying.

 

The US will automatically qualify for 2030 as holders.