FIFA's mission to ruin football

[LSUY]

Fifa president Gianni Infantino has proposed a new World Cup format of 48 nations, with 16 groups of three teams and the top two of each group going through to the last 32.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football...i-infantino-wants48-team-world-cup-16-groups/

 

[Marty]

International football is dying and FIFA instead of trying to save it are pouring fuel on the fire. The World Cup should be for the elite who deserve to be there, not for all and sundry.

 

[Azazello]

I must admit, I just don't care very much about international football. I don't see how 48 teams will improve matters. It's just giving everyone a turn, like making sure Fat Paul gets a game by sticking him in goal.

 

[Danners9]

Are they going to scrap the qualifying and excessive friendlies in the early months of the season?

Oh, no. Probably not..

 

[Bensonrecon]

Bet Scotland still don't qualify

 

[Gbspurs]

Are they going to scrap the qualifying and excessive friendlies in the early months of the season?

Oh, no. Probably not..

Exactly. I'd be 100% behind this if they scrap qualifying.

 

[nailsy]

It sounds like a terrible idea. Two matches per team in a group so you're almost certainly through if you win your first game. As it says in that article you're potentially going to be left with the scenario where the two teams in the final match could just draw for both to go through.

I'd like to see them keep to the four team groups but scrap the seeding for the draws.

 

[Archibald&Crooks]

International football is dying and FIFA instead of trying to save it are pouring fuel on the fire. The World Cup should be for the elite who deserve to be there, not for all and sundry.

This is exactly what was done to the European Cup. Milking the cash cow.

 

[Rocksuperstar]

If FIFA want their competitions to be taken seriously, rather than just generate as much revenue and dodge as much tax as they possibly can, they need to do two things;

Reduce the World Cup down to 24 teams - four groups of six, two from each go through. So plenty of groups games, then straight into the QF's. They also need to start paying some fucking tax to the host countries, they're not a bloody church.

Secondly they need to look at the U21's WC and realise how much talent there is available to play in that competition, but don't because it has such a low profile compared to the senior competition. They need to make more of it, it's the future of the international game, so why not pump a ton of effort into raising the profile to a similar level, encourage the international FA's to promote their young teams more in schools and actually play their superstar 18, 19 + 20 year olds in their age group. Make the experience more fun, more interactive for the young fans and run the whole thing alongside a small U18's tournament, as a sort of warm up act for each match.

Constantly squeezing the elderly udders of the WC is not producing more milk, it's just pissing off the cow.

 

[Spurger King]

The World Cup is generally fucking awful anyway. What with Russia and Qatar round the corner, its credibility is only going to get worse.

Bringing in more crap teams sure as hell won't improve it.

 

[mightyspur]

They really should just introduce two or three tiers in world football. Top 15 + 1 winner from lower tier teams get to play in the world cup, no seedings in groups of 4, straight to QFs.

Other teams partake in a World Vase/Plate tournament. Win it, you automatically get a shot at the WC.

The other comp will give the smaller nations (Scotland) something to strive for and have a chance of winning and it'll give the English fans something to moan about when they end up in it but ultimately don't win it. Bit like Spurs and the Europa.

 

[Danners9]

They really should just introduce two or three tiers in world football. Top 15 + 1 winner from lower tier teams get to play in the world cup, no seedings in groups of 4, straight to QFs.

Other teams partake in a World Vase/Plate tournament. Win it, you automatically get a shot at the WC.

The other comp will give the smaller nations (Scotland) something to strive for and have a chance of winning and it'll give the English fans something to moan about when they end up in it but ultimately don't win it. Bit like Spurs and the Europa.

do you mean top 15 as per the rankings? it's based on form, which means a South American team can go from 30th to 10th over a summer because they played a tournament while few others did.

http://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ranking-table/men/

Currently Italy and Netherlands are out of the top 15, while Poland and Switzerland are in. There are 5 South American teams and 10 European teams. That would be your World Cup. Just like 1930.

They have to do something though. The qualifying is tedious, the mission to extend it beyond its means is diluting the competition by creating more meaningless games than is necessary, and selling it to dictatorships around the world for political/financial gain is tarnishing the competition's credibility.

As a compromise i'd keep the qualifying but remove mid-season friendlies, keep the number of participants progressing from the groups as they are but remove minnows like Liechtenstein, Andorra, San Marino and others to reduce the total number of qualifying games but introduce a pre-qualifying tournament for them, so one moves forward instead of all.

Feels a bit harsh on the smaller nations but they aren't getting better by being spanked. San Marino and Andorra are 202/203 in the rankings, out of 204 nations with points (some feature but don't have any points yet). Maybe they'd be better off competing against similar sides and learning that way instead of kicking off, losing the ball, conceding and kicking off again.

Big problem FIFA has/created is that each member gets a vote, which has the same value as all the others, so they provide cash and opportunity in exchange for votes. Extending the tournaments provides more chances, more money for themselves/the federations, and they get gratitude/influence in return.

 

[Gassin's finest]

I'm still banging the "take our ball home and say we're not playing" drum. Fuck FIFA off, go start our own summer competition. Who invented the bloody game anyway?