Wenger’s World Cup masterplan may give football a better future
In two years Europe and the United States will do it all over again in Rome. There is no outcry over the indecent haste, merely pleasure at the Ryder Cup calendar’s return to normal.
Three years between contests, after last year’s Covid-induced cancellation, has felt like way too long.
Another biennial event, the Ashes, is fast approaching on the horizon this winter. It doesn’t feel like overkill for England and Australia to meet on the cricket field so regularly.
Football though is up in arms over Arsene Wenger’s and FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s proposals to shorten the World Cup’s four-yearly cycle.
Because that is what we are attuned to, the instinctive reaction is to recoil. But why exactly?
The prevailing argument seems to be that as it has always taken place every four years it must continue to take place every four years.
The greatest sporting event of all, the Olympic Games, moves to the same rhythm but it only does so because Baron de Coubertin copied the blueprint of the original Ancient Greek Games.
Just because the Ancient Greeks did it one way does not mean modern-day sport has to adhere slavishly to the same thinking. Athletes competed naked back in the day.that
tradition has not been maintained.
Four years is actually an awfully long time betweenworld Cups for a footballer.
Professionals are at their peak in their 20s.they have a decade at the top.that gives them two, or possibly three,world Cups to aim for.
Throw in the vagaries of qualification, injury and selection and the window is a perilously small one.
Alfredo Di Stefano never played in one, neither did Bernd Schuster, George Best (below) or Ryan Giggs. The football world was the poorer for it.
The idea of sport at the elite level is for the very best to compete against the very best.
Spread the love and stage aworld Cup every two years and the chance for those players to do so doubles. So does the chance for the rest of us to watch.
Wenger, it has been argued, would never have countenanced such a change when he was Arsenal manager and that much is true.
He, like every club representative, would have had a vested interest in retaining the status quo. But that does not mean the plan is bad for the game as a whole.
In his new role as FIFA’S head of global football development he also has vested interests – developing the game across the world.
A two-yearlyworld Cup increases staging opportunities as well as playing chances.as things stand, it may be a generation before aspiring nations like Australia and China get to host a tournament. Moreworld Cups mean more countries becomeworld Cup hosts.
Maybe even England again, if the storming ofwembley at the Euros final is airbrushed from history.
PORT has learned that it is more flexible than it thought after Covid. Because of the impact of the virus England’s players are currently in a four-year cycle that features two Euros, one World Cup and a fallow summer.
The Wenger plan is no different in terms of commitment, only tournament make-up. It would involve two World Cups, one Euros and one summer off.
It would be demanding on the players, yes, but the majority would embrace the change – especially withwenger’s requirement for a 25-day stand-down period after eachworld Cup.
The pinnacle of the game is where they want to be. If they are handed the chance of more shots at glory on the biggest stage, most would take it.
It is true that the status of aworld Cup is enhanced by its rarity value.
Christmas would not be Christmas if it was every month. But two years is not every month. The time span works for athletics and its world championships, which was a four-yearly event until 1991.
Inevitably a shake-up on such a scale would ruffle the feathers of the clubs butwenger’s carrot of compressing the current international windows to reduce the number of interruptions to the league programme would be of benefit to them.
Even if the forces of conservatism defeat Wenger’s big idea, two more substantial chunks of international football a season rather than five would surely be an improvement on the current fragmented system.
It should at least be given a fair hearing. Wenger, the unlikely revolutionary, may just have hit upon a better future for football.