Monday, September 04, 2006

Lets have a heated debate

I was reading about how international football games need a revamp today and I have to agree. I propose the following:

1. Get rid of FIFA. The current system where each country has a vote is ridiculous and leaves FIFA wide open to corruption (which is rife). Each football association should put a set percentage of its revenue into FIFA's replacement organisation. Those who put in the most have the largest say in what happens. The money can then be redistributed properly (rather than badly) to football related charities/projects in poorer countries. This would mean that England, Italy and Spain would have more control over international football than Malta, Trinidad & Tobago and San Marino. In a nutshell, More pay = More say.

2. Introduce a pyramid scheme for qualification. Although you could argue that this is elitist, surely the whole point of a tournament like the World Cup or European Championship is to prove who's the best? Therefore it would make more sense to filter out the shite teams at an earlier opportunity. They would play against teams of similar strength until they improved enough to get promoted into a tougher group.
The groups could play mini summer tournaments on one of the 'odd' summers to establish who would be in the finals tournament the following summer.

3. Get rid of regional qualification. As part of the above measure, you would play teams of similar rank in a set location. So you wouldn't get in by default because there isn't a decent team in your part of the world.

4. Don't seed teams in the finals stage. By filtering out all of the crap earlier on it would be pointless to seed the teams that have made it into the finals. Especially if you're going to base it on something stupid like previous world cup form as the players that got you the results two or three world cups ago have most likely retired since.

5. As friendlies are too risky for clubs in their current state, get rid of the 90 minute game and have three 30 minute exhibitions. This means that an international manager could sub a player on or off three times to give everyone a fair amount of playing time and to see how well different players 'gel'. Plus it would make the game more interesting for the crowd. The best out of three wins the match overall.

6. Get rid of ranking points. Once the groups have been established, ranking points will be meaningless as any team with a mis-representative ranking will filter up or down accordingly. This will mean that Brazil will no longer have a ridiculous world ranking score due to the excessive amount of friendlies they play against shite.

7. Don't base the replacement to FIFA in Switzerland. There is something very wrong about basing an organisation which collects and distributes incredibly large amounts of money worldwide in a country that has a murky financial history and a tendancy to look the other way in regards to the operations of overseas bank account holders.

8. Give referees technical assistance in international tournaments. Football is the richest sport in the world yet with the exception of golf it is the only major sport that uses absolutely no technology to assist its officials. Tennis has cyclops and net sensors (although I believe only Wimbledon uses them), Cricket has the third umpire, Athletics has electronic starting blocks, freeze frame finish line cameras, stop watches etc. the list goes on. It is a farce that teams are encouraged to cheat as little is done to stop them. Not even retrospectively.

So if my reader has any feedback on my ideas or suggestions of their own then feel free to air it.

2 Comments:

At 10:52 pm, Blogger Infoholic UK said...

I reckon you'd be far better off scrapping UEFA and getting rid of the snooze-fest that is the Champion$ £eague. And I may be an investment banker [insert punchline here], but I can't agree with your cash = influence stance. Even the Septics have realised that sport doesn't work under the Capitalist model - egality does.

Screw the group stage bollocks, knockout is what its all about...make qualification worldwide on a home-and-away basis, seeded on world rankings. Last 32 go to the show...

 
At 6:25 am, Blogger Phill said...

Damn I'd forgotten to mention the Champions League.

This is the one elitist competition I do want to see an end to as it's ruining club football.

It serves to do nothing other than to keep the current top clubs at the top. Plus as you quite rightly point out, it's fucking dull. Bring back the European Cup and make it League winners only like it used to be.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who believes in global qualification

 

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