World Qualifiers: The new international football calendar

TO global Nations League and Club World Cup as it was conceived by fifa These are the options that are gaining the most momentum as the days go by in the face of the imminent change in the configuration of the world football calendar.

The decision will not be made in the next few days in Doha, but it is already on the agenda of all the players in world football. A World Cup every two years would be too much wear and tear for everyone, so the main alternative is to rethink the nations league and raise the UEFA project to involve all confederations.

The draw of the World Cup is getting almost all the attention in Qatar. However, the calendar reform proposed by fifa For months it has been on the roadmap of the governing body of world football. It is not on the agenda of the congress that will take place on Thursday morning, but it is present in the conversations held by the leaders of the different federations.

The option that is beginning to seem most likely, as MARCA said weeks ago, is to hold a nations league at a global level, in which all the confederations participate and which can be an intermediate and key step to reach an agreement between all the parties. This is the alternative that currently seems to be the first preference in terms of the calendar change, which will take effect in 2024.

emergency approval

The possible new competition would become part of the new scenario that all the players in world football are obliged to approve with some urgency. TO World Cup every two years has not been well received by all parties and the dialogue is drifting towards recovering a little what was the old Confederations CupExtended to more teams.

As to Club World Cup project, was forgotten as a result of the pandemic, but the idea is still on the table. There was talk at the time of 24 clubs, but now it remains to be seen if the competition will follow the same structure as originally planned.

The first edition of this renewed Club World Cup It was going to take place in China in 2021. Everything was paralyzed by the pandemic, but the idea will revive in the negotiation framework that all the parties involved are having.

before the end of the year

The idea is that the new calendar will be approved before the end of 2022. Nothing is final, but the current arrangement is that a major competition will be held every year. Starting with the World Cup, it would be followed by the world league of nations, the european championship and the rest of continental tournaments, and closing the cycle with the Club World Cup.

What seems ruled out is concentrating the national team’s games over a month in the middle of the season. The idea has not taken off. On the one hand, the coaches prefer to have contact with the players later in the year and, on the other, the national team matches serve as an economic framework for the federations. What is likely to happen is to reduce the number of FIFA dates set aside for international matches from five to four.