Thread by @nicktolhurst

OK don’t hate me but I’m coming round to the “world cup every 2 years” idea.

There are more reasons than one might think at 1st glance why this makes sense.

1. The premier league is turning into a super league in itself with 5-6 other European clubs dominating football.

The gap between these and most clubs is widening every day.

International football is now, strangely, a more equalising force in football than club football.

In other words as club football gets more detached from the mainstream - international football is filing this gap by providing genuine completion where money is not the overriding insurmountable factor.

2. Regional groups (UEFA, CAF etc) are simply filling the “in between years” anyway. So if FIFA doesn’t do this - regional groups will anyway with nations league and Africa cup of nations already every 2 years.

3. With 15 or so clubs from just 5 European countries sucking in all the best players in ever larger numbers the “disconnect” between most fans in the world and “their” players is built in & widening.

Making the World Cup more often balances out this disconnect.

4. A big argument against more World Cup is it would make FIFA “more money” - sure there’s greed behind this idea and FIFA has certainly had huge corruption problems but this ignores the fact that FIFA is world football.
Football should exist for the world not 15 European clubs..

..if FIFA members want more World cups this is far more Democratic - for all FIFA’s faults - than running the game so that top Premier league clubs can maximise revenue on summer tours which brings nothing to the countries (S America/Africa/ East🇪🇺) where these players come from.

5. Why is the Euros qualification so long with so many fixtures & small teams and more teams in the finals?
Because countries want more football!

So why is it alright to do this for Europe but not for FIFA?

Why not streamline Euro qualification but with 2year World cups?

The more you think deeply about this more you realise resistance to the idea is based on only really 3 things:

1. Assumption of bad faith by FIFA
2. “It’s always been 4 years”
3. Player burn out

The 1st is irrelevant, if members want it.
2nd is nostalgia
3rd doesn’t add up…

The player burnout issue is irrelevant as international football - even with 2 year WCups - is still a tiny part of football calendar.

Clubs have no problem filing a season with over 50 games + summer tours..but overwhelming majority of teams at World Cups play only 3-4 games!

England are playing 4 games against San Marino & Andorra this Euro season. If England were to come 2nd their qualification to euros would involve 12 games.

You can win an entire World Cup with just 7 games.

This is madness.

Essentially the argument against a 2 year World Cup is for continuing to fill up international football with current meaningless games like against Andorra at expense of increasing meaningful games like a World Cup.

In fact you wouldn’t even need to increase the number of games!

There are 55 UEFA members.
About 15 of these play every qualification despite knowing they will never qualify for a World Cup.
10 qualify basically every time.

We need to streamline the qualification process so that everyone has a chance to qualify with fewer meaningless games.

So how about World Cup qualification for Europe:

1. Pre-qualifier groups to get 25 lower ranked nations down to 15

2. 15 Groups of 3 teams of the above 15 & top 30 UEFA teams.

➡️ Qualification for top 30 teams now 4 games instead of 10

➡️ More “equal games”for lower teams

Of this was done then even though World Cup we held every 2 years…most teams would play exactly the same number of games.

And what’s more the number of games would contain more that were better balanced.