A debate has broken out between some of world football’s leading administrators over the size of future World Cup tournaments.
Amid suggestions of jockeying for position ahead of the next election for the presidency of Fifa – the game’s global governing body – current president Sepp Blatter said there should be a cut in the number of European teams at the finals and an increase in the number of African and Asian representatives.
In response, Uefa president Michel Platini went into bat for the Europeans.
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He agreed with the idea of an increase in the number of African and Asian teams at future World Cups, but not at the expense of any existing participants.
Instead, he has called for a rise in the number of finalists to 40 from the existing 32, and his proposals included adding another European team to the mix rather than cutting back the number of qualifiers from the continent.
Putting aside the possibility that Blatter and Platini are likely to go head to head for the Fifa presidency in 2015, what are the merits of these two proposals – and how are the finances of the World Cup likely to impact these suggestions?
“From a purely sporting perspective, I would like to see globalisation finally taken seriously, and the African and Asian national associations accorded the status they deserve at the Fifa World Cup,” Blatter said in the FIFA Weekly publication. “It cannot be that the European and South American confederations lay claim to the majority of the berths at the World Cup because taken together they account for significantly fewer member associations than Africa and Asia.
“At the end of the day, an equal chance for all is the paramount imperative of elite sport.”
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At the finals in Brazil next year, Europe has 13 places, Africa has five and Asia has four, and Blatter described this as a “flawed state of affairs”.
He added: “Africa is woefully under-represented at the World Cup.
“As long as this remains the case, African sides may never win an intercontinental trophy, regardless of progress on the playing side.”
In terms of his numbers, Blatter is right. There are 54 football associations in Africa (and nearly 100 when you combine Africa and Asia).
There are a similar number of associations in Europe – and yet Europe has nearly three times as many qualifiers as Africa does.
There is also a precedent for Blatter’s suggestion to carry out some restructuring.
Although the current 32-team set-up seems normal to us today, it was only in 1982 that the number of qualifiers was increased from 16 to 24. It rose to 32 in 1998.
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The evidence backs up Blatter’s suggestion that opening up the tournament to countries elsewhere in the world helps develop the game in those places.
Since the expansion of the finals began, countries such as Cameroon, the US, Senegal and Ghana have all reached the last eight, and South Korea finished in fourth place in 2002.
But while the development of football around the world is welcome, and rightly fits within the brief of Fifa’s president, is it right to inject what amounts to positive discrimination into the qualifying process?
The fact remains that the best teams in the world are South American and European, not African or Asian. Shouldn’t the World Cup finals be biased towards keeping the status quo rather than restructuring it to give outsiders a greater chance?
Although there has been some success amongst the merging football nations over the past couple of decades, none of them (perhaps with the exception of South Korea in 2002) has come close to winning the competition – and it’s not as though they haven’t had representatives at the finals.
That is why Platini’s counter-suggestion has its attractions.
“Instead of taking away some European [nations], we have to go to 40 teams in the World Cup,” he told the Times recently.
“We can add two African, two Asiatic, two American and one from Europe. I support this idea totally.”
He suggested that the change could come as soon as the 2018 tournament in Russia.
“Football is changing and now we have 209 associations. There are more countries, so why reduce?”
What Platini might have added was that with the growth in interest globally – in terms of both the number of associations and the number of people who watch the game – his proposals could have greater financial implications than Blatter’s.
The sponsors of the World Cup read like a who’s-who of global brands. Sony, Continental, Adidas, Hyundai, Budweiser, Emirates, Visa, Johnson & Johnson, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are just some of the big names that pour billions of pounds into sponsoring the competition.
These corporate giants want one thing – exposure. And the best way to increase exposure is to increase viewing figures.
Blatter’s plan might go some way to increasing audiences in emerging countries, but in one fell swoop his plans would also cut interest in a number of European markets.
England, Holland and France have all missed out on at least one World Cup finals since the expansion to 32 qualifying teams, and the chances of more “big” teams failing to make the grade would be increased if the number of European places were cut.
Romantics might argue, of course, that that’s tough – if they are not good enough, these teams shouldn’t be allowed to qualify.
But that is not the argument likely to be used by the corporate paymasters, whose interest is in extending the global reach of the tournament as far as possible.
Domestically, the revenue generated in countries where teams qualify for the World Cup is large, too.
According to analysis by Numis, the success of Roy Hodgson’s England team in getting to Brazil could be worth £30m in advertising revenue to ITV alone.
Dan Clays, managing director of communications agency OMD, told trade publication Media Week: “During the last Fifa World Cup, back in June 2010, ITV’s advertising revenue increased by a massive 43.6% year-on-year during the tournament in South Africa.”
In the wider scheme of things, ITV might not have a huge amount of clout when it comes to deciding on the future structure of the World Cup, but a lot of its advertisers will be the same huge brands that already have close ties with Fifa.
Why would any of those brands want to resist an increase in global consumption of the sport they are helping to find?
There has already been some public pushback on Platini’s plan.
As well as the suspicion that his suggestion is blatant electioneering ahead of the next Fifa presidential election, the Russians have said that expanding the tournament in 2018 is a logistical step too far for them, with their scheduling and construction plans now well under way.
And Fifa general-secretary Jerome Valcke said: “Never say never, but it’s unlikely.”
These ideas are likely to be batted around the table at the next Fifa executive committee meeting in December.
It’s unlikely that anything will be decided then, but we might get a clearer indication whether either proposal has any legs.
It will be just as interesting to see if the discussion involves purely footballing issues or whether commercial interests win the day.