Lions play too much for Gareth
SOUTHGATE ANTI WORLD CUP PLAN
GARETH Southgate believes a World Cup every two years is a mad idea.
And the England manager thinks there is already too much football on the calendar without throwing that into the mix.
FIFA are trying to raise support for holding the World Cup every two years instead of the usual four.
If that happened, UEFA would try to have the Euros every two seasons as well meaning a tournament every single summer.
Throw in the African Nations Cup and Copa America and it adds up to potential chaos in the calendar.
Most managers already think top players don’t get enough time off with most of the summer break taken up with internationals.
It turns out that Southgate has already spoken to FIFA envoy Arsene Wenger about having the World Cup twice as often. And he’s not a great fan of the idea, although he admits football will continue to evolve over the coming decades.
The England manager said: “I actually met with Arsene a couple of weeks ago – he was meeting a few different coaches – so I have a pretty good idea of the proposals.
“I think the whole calendar needs reviewing. My feedback would be I know our generation are going to find a World Cup every two years quite a strange concept.
“But I also know that things like The Hundred in cricket have been an incredible success, so I’m open minded about some of those things.
“But the calendar generally needs to be tidied up.
“We can’t just add more in. I agree generally with the concept of better quality matches, fewer matches of better quality across the board, but there’s lots of other things that need consideration. We can’t just add more in at the moment.
“We keep adding more competitions in and I’m intrigued to see what comes out to allow that space to happen because we can’t keep adding onto the workload of the players.”
Complex
Southgate says he is keeping an open mind about changes to the World Cup.
But his main priority is that his players are not run until they drop. He thinks many stars would be only too happy to play in more World Cups.
Southgate added: “It was interesting to hear the proposals and I was able to feedback some of my thoughts.
“Without knowing how all that fits together because its too complex to say it was all positive or I didn’t agree with it all. There’s too many different strands, so there’s bits I thought could work, bits I think need more consideration and bits that probably wouldn’t work.
“I’m not hugely pro or massive negative about the concept. I think it needs a lot more thought.
“As a traditionalist, it feels you could lose some of the allure of the World Cup because the scarcity of it makes it more important.
“But I also get it that if you are a player who has an injury for the World Cup, you might only get one opportunity every eight years, and that is really tough. I am not certain on that side of it.”
Southgate wants to see players have more of a role in shaping the football calendar.
He added: “The players’ unions could gather the thoughts of the players and I just think everybody
has to work together on the football calendar.
“We talked about this after Covid and you can’t keep adding. We have had some fixtures that have been so difficult, if you think back to last September when the players had not played a league game, then we were expected to play at a high level in international fixtures.
Works
“We can’t keep adding in those things.
“But none of us in the game are holding our hands out for less money, so we also have to accept that comes with a consequence.
“There is a balance to all this but across the board governing bodies have to work for a calendar that works for the leagues and confederations and for FIFA.
“It has to be coordinated. If we are looking that far ahead, there is no reason it can’t be.”
There could be major conflict as UEFA are not happy about the move for more World Cups.
That would definitely take away from their own Euro finals.
European football chief Alexander Ceferin said: “UEFA and its national associations also have serious reservations and grave concerns surrounding reports of FIFA’s plans
“If realized, the new schedule will have an adverse impact on the balance between local, domestic, continental, and international competitions
“This will likely undermine tournaments such as the Asian Cup, Africa Cup of Nations, Copa America, European Championship, Gold Cup, and Nations Cup, which hold just as much importance to matchgoing fans as the World Cup itself.”