Major sporting events need patience and time. Shortening the cycle would confirm that the game really is all about moneyThere has never been so much football. Every day, someone somewhere plays someone else, and you can follow it all over the world on any device – live, on demand, or just the highlights, on YouTube, DAZN or Twitter. There’s more to come; soon the Champions League will host a hundred more games a year. Our collective attention, as research calls it, is declining in the process, but it’s hard to stop the trend.What Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, and his adviser Arsène Wenger now have in mind could finally lead to overconsumption. They want to hold the World Cup every two...
This is about money and power – with Fifa trying to isolate Europe and weaken UefaIt sounds so enticing, doesn’t it? A World Cup or European Championship every summer, allowing us to gorge like a footballing Augustus Gloop almost all year round. Never mind the risk of burnout, of greater TV subscription fees, of the game becoming even more bloated; just listen to the tinkle of nickel and copper swelling Fifa’s coffers.Yet such a proposal is about to sneak up on us, without most people realising, just like the 48-team World Cup – a ridiculous idea that became a reality. On Friday, Arsène Wenger, Fifa’s chief of global football development, even suggested a new football calendar could be decided by...
The football authorities have a duty of care to protect the players and Fifa failed with its risk assessment of the gameOne of the many sad things about what unfolded during England’s game in Hungary on Thursday is that it was completely preventable. We knew at Kick It Out there was a high risk of racism and disorder, so Fifa must have known too, but nothing was done to prevent it.So we find ourselves with victims, when there didn’t need to be victims, and we are talking about sanctions when the solution was to put adequate prevention in place. It’s laughable that the stadium ban imposed by Uefa for the discriminatory behaviour of Hungary fans at Euro 2020 did not...
Norwegian clubs and players have taken a stand for migrant workers, but who is prepared to follow them? While we should expect no better from the ghouls at Fifa, it remains an enduring ignominy that over a decade after their decision to grant World Cup 2022 to Qatar, apparently widespread global indifference means the tournament remains fully on course to take place in the new-build stadiums of the Arab state. So much so that a qualification process some thought might never happen began this week.Thousands of migrant workers have died in Qatar since Sepp Blatter gifted them their Fifa-approved golden ticket. The state’s own official figures for deaths specifically related to construction for World Cup stadiums are small – three...
The building of World Cup venues has, by some estimates, cost thousands of lives. Should we be sitting in these arenas watching football? Or tipping them into the harbour?If you want to be picky, you could say Raheem Sterling chose an ill-targeted metaphor in his statement this week on racial prejudice and the need for a step-change in football’s power structures.Comparing the spread of racism to the spread of Covid-19 is probably not the best way to change those minds most in need of changing. Let’s face it, a global Venn diagram of virus-deniers and bigotry-sceptics is likely to feature a fairly dense overlap, a concentration of people who don’t really think either of these things exist. You hear that?...