Sport
Is it time we forget about national sides?
Is it time we forget about national sides?
You have to go a long way to find someone who was pleased that the season was being stopped three weeks in. It was building momentum, excitement had grown by the close of the window and it felt like we were getting a rough idea for how teams will be this season.
Then there is a fortnight of international football, international football that almost no one cares about anymore. That players pick up mysterious injuries to avoid, that fans bemoan and mismatches that neither entertain nor teach us anything.
It is beyond doubt that international football is now inferior to club football. This is not just because of the money paid out by Europe’s top clubs, but it obviously plays a part. If you are earning six figures a week from your team, it is understandable that players do not want to put that in jeopardy by suffering an injury in training or against the team ranked 165th in the world.
Looking away from home
The disinterest in England’s matches is obvious. Their home attendances for this qualifying campaign, however, have still been far and away the biggest in the world. Downplaying the care for the national team has become a bandwagon movement, but the problems faced by the international game run wider than a half-full Wembley.
The recently successful nations have players slightly keener to pull on the jersey. There is still a low ceiling on how much people can care about a qualification group that is such an inevitability, though. Qualifying groups for France, Spain, Germany and the European elite are a walk in a terribly unfair park, and the teams, managers and fans can only lose. Spain’s two fixtures with Italy at least provided intrigue in this campaign, even if that was still a mismatch last weekend.
France’s group could get tense for the last couple of matchdays, but Didier Deschamps’ side are still strong favourites even after the calamitous draw with Luxembourg.
Away from Group A, it is Groups D and I that provide potential fun. These groups are without one of the top sides, and – even before the qualification had started – looked relatively even with several teams in with a realistic shot of qualification or finishing top. Others groups, like Group E – where Poland, Montenegro and Denmark are separated by three points – could yet be set for a blockbuster finish.
Obvious solution?
There are groups that suggest that the group qualifying format has potential to reignite international football. It does not, however, offer anything for the best teams, and these are the teams with the star players, the players we need most of all if national teams are to become the pinnacle, the players who generate waves of excitement and produce brilliance.
Aside from the immensely rare draws, the minnows benefit little, too. Avoiding humiliation and picking up two points in a 10 match group phase hardly inspires footballing improvement. Often only two matches of the 10 are against a team they can realistically compete with, and sometimes not even that.
A tiered qualification has logistical difficulties, and would limit mobility for rapidly improving nations, but it is the best short-term solution to the serious problems facing the international game.
Football has a poor track record of accepting change, however, and it could be far too late by the time anything is done. World Cups will generate a wild hype around much of the footballing world, but international football is edging closer to fizzling into irrelevance in the three years between.
An Alternative
There are clear issues with the international divisional system, mind. It limits the attainment for teams in the lower echelons, and deprives the sport of those – admittedly immensely rare – moments of joy for low-ranking nations as they snatch a result against multi-million pound footballers.
We also have no reliable means of dividing countries based on strength. The rankings system is notoriously easy to manipulate, though this could well be on the verge of vital reform too.
One option to build a focus and excitement on the qualification campaign could be to rejig the scheduling. Rather than seeing it as a blight on an exciting club season, it could be played in one intense chunk, much like the European Championships or World Cup are.
Start the league season later, fill in the international breaks with the fixtures previously played in August and play a three or four week batch of the 10 qualification matches in July and August the summer before the World Cup. Clubs could fill in their pre-season – albeit a few weeks later than currently – and the argument that international football detracts from the club season would be feeble.
What now?
International football clutters up an already over-the-top schedule. It will not be scrapped, but it is in desperate need of reform if it is to regain interest.
It is hard to have any confidence in the footballing authorities to make the right decisions, let alone do it quick enough. As injuries to star players further infuriate the world’s biggest, and most powerful, football clubs, the pressure for change will only grow.
Rescheduling or a tiered system might not be ideal for all parties, but the lengthy qualification system is already grating on fans and clubs alike.
