The world’s top footballers would have you know that they are tired. Tired that they have an exhausting calendar year with seemingly non-stop club and country fixtures. Tired that there are more competitions added every few months without a thought spared for their well-being. And tired that they have to dance to the whims and fancies of team owners and authorities who dangle wads of cash in front of their eyes.
There seem to be decisions taken in “everyone’s best interests” except those of the actual players. In 2021 alone, we witnessed the announcement, and demise, of the European “Super League” of rich clubs breaking away from the Champions League; the commencement of the Europa Conference League, a third-tier of European competition supposedly for smaller teams… to be gobbled up by English/Spanish sharks; and the brainwave to have a World Cup every two years.
Funnily enough, the authorities are all jostling with each other for space in the calendar and for larger shares of the revenue pie from sponsors and fans. UEFA and FIFA opposed the Super League, then UEFA opposed FIFA’s biennial World Cup plan. And before long, big teams will start asking what is the point of the ECL if the returns are not worth the effort, just like the now-redundant English League Cup and the FIFA Club World Cup.
The players though, don’t have a say. “If you play that every two years, mentally it’s tough,” said French legend Thierry Henry of the idea to play World Cups in alternate years. “I came out of them shattered mentally.”
If that was an ex-player expressing his views, listen to this current player: “They want to put a European Championship and a World Cup every year. When will we get a rest? Never. In the end, top players will get injured and injured and injured.... We are not robots. It's just more and more games, and less rest for us, and nobody cares.”
That was an exasperated Real Madrid and Belgium goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois venting after participating in the relatively new Nations League tournament last month. He minced no words in slamming both FIFA and UEFA in one blow.
The idea to make the World Cup a biennial affair was proposed by the Saudi Arabian Football Association in May, asking FIFA to conduct a feasibility study. The suggestion to conduct the study was approved by a majority of the 211 member nations, and before long, Arsene Wenger—the former Arsenal manager turned FIFA head of global football development—presented a comprehensive plan.
With the vote to pass the new plan mooted for December, there was backlash from several quarters. Not only did numerous former players and managers criticise it, but the International Olympic Committee and even one of FIFA’s major sponsors, Adidas, expressed their opposition.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino eventually indicated, on October 20, that the biennial format was not a certainty, after a meeting with the FIFA Council in Zurich. A summit would be held on December 20 for all international federations to voice their views and reach a consensus.
“What I have said from the beginning is that we are going to change things only if we are completely convinced that it will be beneficial for everybody. For everybody,” said Infantino after the meeting.
There are several reasons the World Cup is held every four years. In the early years, it was a costly affair for countries to fund trips—sometimes halfway around the globe—and so they saved up enough for them to go once in four years. Federations receive better financial backing these days, so that is no longer a major factor in continuing the quadrennial cycle.
Another reason is the volume of qualifying matches required to give every member nation a fair chance to earn their qualification. For the 2018 World Cup, qualification involving 210 countries began on March 12, 2015, and featured 872 matches.
For the 32 countries that eventually make it, their qualification is every bit earned, sometimes at the expense of giants like Italy and the Netherlands. It is a showpiece event that is rightly considered one of the grandest stages in the sporting world, which is why many in the field feel that making it more frequent would diminish the significance of the event.
The logistical and financial aspects that fall on the shoulders of the hosts also cannot be taken for granted. To host the most recent World Cup, Russia had to fork out $10.6 billion of the total cost of $14 billion, the rest of which were collected from sponsors and other means of income. The spent amount is roughly 33 times India’s sports budget for the financial year 2019-20.
Few countries can afford to splash this kind of money as well as ensure the tournament is hassle-free for the 32 teams and staff and the lakhs of fans descending to witness the spectacle. Brazil and South Africa, the two hosts prior to Russia, suffered dire economic challenges for many years after eating up resources for a one-time event.
Now that the financial and competitive reasons are laid out, what about the players involved?
With club football, the increasing number of competitions and fixtures for elite teams have been happening over the decades. Players have expressed their displeasure, albeit not too vehemently because the money is inevitably good.
But with the national teams, money takes a backseat. It is not that the players want to play less. International games evoke genuine pride and passion to play for one’s country and the trophies are cherished all their life.
So not only would it be mentally and physically taxing to have every summer break—remember, there are continental and Olympic events too—shortened to just a few weeks of rest and recuperation, but they would also start to value the tournament less, as mentioned earlier.
(As fans, we could witness eras of dominance that would make it hard to distinguish between the teams playing every two years. Think Real Madrid winning three consecutive Champions League titles with pretty much the same team.)
It must be noted that the majority of the opposition for the biennial World Cup plan came from Europe, while there are others like Igor Stimac, head coach of the Indian national team, and Lionel Scaloni, head coach of the Argentina national team, who opined that it might be beneficial for countries that do not get enough chances to participate on the big stage.
What FIFA could instead do is arrange more matches, be it frendlies or competitive ones, for lower-ranked teams. There is a genuine problem that the qualifiers are usually considered to be cakewalks for the big teams. There is dwindling attention for the qualifiers as the higher-ranked sides usually steamroll past the minnows. England has not lost a qualifier since 2009 and Spain’s defeat to Sweden in August was their first since 1993.
There is no doubt a need to shake things up. Wenger, in his grand plan, proposed there be two mandatory international breaks every year to accommodate these qualifiers and friendlies, plus another mandatory 25 days for players to rest. As good as that sounds, it would make the rest of the year even more packed for players plying their trade in Europe’s top leagues.
"It's just a money game, and we have to be honest about it," said Courtois.
And he is right. Like every other decision taken by FIFA, the plan to shrink the World Cup cycle is no doubt financially motivated. If the move has benevolent intentions “for everybody” as Infantino likes to stress, this is clearly not the best way to develop football around the world or to quench the fan’s thirst for international action.
There have to be other ways to help developing nations compete more, bridge the inequality in the sport and loosen the calendar. For this, they should involve clubs and domestic leagues in the discussion. And the players, of course.
