FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s push to move the World Cup and expand the Club World Cup faces strong opposition from European clubs and players, who foresee disastrous calendar disruptions and financial imbalances, despite Infantino’s claims of universal benefit.
October 10 – FIFA president Gianni Infantino wants Europe’s clubs us to keep an “open mind”, suggesting that the World Cup could be moved from its traditional summer slot to March or October – so football can “be better for everyone”.
The issue here is that football will not be better for everyone and in fact will be significantly worse for 95%+ of Europe’s clubs and all of its leagues. It won’t be good for its leading players either who are already struggling with increased workload. A total of 608 of the 831 players at the 2022 World Cup play for European clubs.
With Infantino’s increased competition sizes, and his move into the club game with the expanded 32-team Club World Cup (which he now wants to increase to 48 teams and hold every two years), the bulk of Europe’s professional players who are not competing in these competitions also face potentially disastrous consequences. Fracturing the infrastructure of the European game will inevitably threaten their jobs as clubs and leagues battle to retain sponsors and schedules in the face of an aggressive FIFA who want to hoover up everyone’s financial lunch.
Infantino claims that they are calendar is impossible but essentially his message to Europe and its clubs on the sidelines of the European Football Club meeting in Rome is to expect more disruption to your calendars more often.
“In December you cannot play in one part of the world and in July you cannot play in another,” he said. “We have to have an open mind.”
Earlier in the EFC’s plenary session his message to the clubs was: “Everywhere in the world there is football. Everywhere in the world they look at European football clubs. You are an example for the entire world. We stick together, we work together, we are united. We will develop [football] here in Europe — coming from Rome to the entire world.”
FIFA’s concept of unity, an open mind and transparent debate is different to others, especially Europe’s stakeholders where FIFA has refused to engage or invite either players’ union FIFPRO or the European Leagues Association to the discussion table – though one suspects there is very little discussion in any case.
The 2034 World Cup will be played in Saudi Arabia which almost guarantees that it will be moved to a winter slot. The full Club World Cup is next scheduled for 2029 and Spain, Portugal and Morocco are favourites to host. If the schedule becomes bi-annual, Qatar are most people’s front runners for 2031 which will again necessitate a move from summer.