National federations raise concerns over international break reduction

Former

coach and current FIFA’s chief of global football development

Arsene Wenger

is conducting a consultation on the future of the international football calendar.  FIFA had initially proposed a plan which suggests that the number of international breaks, currently 5, would be reduced to two, and countries would play only 7 qualification matches, including the play-offs.

Wenger, however, says FIFA has mildly withdrawn from the idea and may consider to make a few tweaks in their plan, since national federations have raised concerns over the financial impact the reduction of international breaks and qualifiers match may have on football.

“The feedback we got is that one single October window (for qualification) is considered too extreme and that two touch points, the end of the season and October, are not enough,”

Wenger said at a virtual press conference.

“There has been demand from the federations to keep the original number of games because they sell the qualifiers and they think the drop of income will be too big for them.

“The smaller nations also said if you reduce the number of qualifiers and we do not qualify for the big tournaments, we have less opportunities to compete as with the current format.

“Everybody says the status quo is not accepted. We want a change. So what can we do?

“Looking at the federations demanding for more qualifiers than we proposed initially, we could add option three. That means in the initial proposal, for example, in the option two you had four games in October and three games in March. We could play six games in October and two games in March and two games in preparation for the final tournament in June.”

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