Quote:
Originally Posted by PartyGirlUK
Thoughts on the following please:
FIFA/UEFA should use the UNL format (which I actually like) to promote more inter-confederation play. Take a team like England. In the typical Olympiad we'll play something like the following number of competitive matches.
8 UNL matches
10 Euros qualifiers
4 Euros Matches
10 World Cup qualifiers
4 World Cup matches
= 36 matches. Of these 33 to 34 will be intra-UEFA matches. It's boring. England against Cameroon, France against Japan, let's see more of that.
So keep the UNL, turning it into the de facto Euros, and every four years have UEFA + one out of Africa/(Austral)asia/N. America while S. America plays in a tournament with the other two.
e.g
2028: UEFA + CAF; CONMEBOL + CONCACAF + AFC
2032: UEFA + CONCACAF; CONMEBOL + CAF + AFC
2036: UEFA + AFC; CONMEBOL + CONCACAF + CAF
All the other confederations would have their own biennial UNL type events.
Alternatively keep the Euros, Copa América etc. but create two UNL - old world and new world say, so you'd have plenty of intra-confederation play outside of the very top leagues of the "UNL"s which would be dominated by UEFA and CONMEBOL respectively (but it's high enough variance that you'd get e.g African teams made it to League A)
Much I was love to see England play Argentina and Brazil more regularly, I think the way it is is one of the reasons the World Cup is still the pinnacle.
International football has become far more devalued since we can see so many of these 'exotic' players in the Premier League or Champions League.
The World Cup is the only competition that still has that bit of mystique about it, a tournament where you can find out about a player for the first time who you've never heard of. Granted, it's nothing like it was pre 90s but it's still there to an extent.