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Good morning to all. So, Germany won the World Cup in the end courtesy of a fantastic Mario Gotze finish in extra time against Argentina. I think it’s hard to disagree that they were worthy winners. They were, overall, the best team of the tournament, and always provided us with good matches to watch (except maybe the one vs France but there’s always one like that). Argentina probably should have won it in normal time with the chances they had, but that’s just how things go sometimes.

Lionel Messi winning the Golden Ball was probably the most obvious consolation prize I’ve ever seen given (it should have gone to James Rodriguez or Thomas Muller…or generally anyone who played consistently well for Germany throughout the tournament), even if he did have a good tournament (faded as it went on, though). 

Brazil, meanwhile, couldn’t even win the third place match after being comfortably defeated 3-0 by Holland. In my last blog, I questioned the need for a third place match and in all honesty it really didn’t do Brazil any favours as it made their torrid end to the tournament even worse. Oh well, old news at this stage I guess.

But in all fairness, this was a fantastic World Cup to watch. Just about everyone I know agrees it has been the best in recent memory, and a thousand times better than the snore-fest that was the 2010 World Cup. Exciting matches from start to finish, lots of goals, a few dark horses really shining (think Colombia, Costa Rica, and the USA), and generally all-out entertainment. Oh, and a team who actually deserved to win it won it for once.

But most importantly (for me, anyway) was that it provided us good quality football to watch during the off-season, the worst time of the year for football fans (unless you follow, uhh…cricket?). Summers with major international tournaments are just so much more exciting than ones without. Just look at this one – the World Cup is over, and there’s only a month to go before the new season kicks off. But summers with nothing just drag and drag for goodness knowns how long.

But isn’t there something that can be done about that? Think of this – next summer there is no major international tournament (except maybe something South American, but I’m talking about Europe here so who cares). Yet in every season clubs are affected by internationals constantly interfering with the campaign, risking injury to important players and leaving them fatigued and whatnot.

The Euro 2016 Groups all feature six teams (except for one that has five) who play each other twice. That’s ten matches, which is five international breaks for this competition over the course of two seasons (not including international friendlies). 

So why not play some of these qualifying games in the summer of 2015? There will be six qualifying matches to be playing for each international team this season, and four next season. Why not instead cut out most of the international breaks and play some of these qualifying matches in the summer?

Here are the potential benefits:

– Six matches could easily be played in June-early July 2015. I suggest four of the six from 2014-15 season and two of the four from 2015-16 season, leaving only one international break (for competitive internationals, anyway)  per season.

– It would mean less fixture compression in domestic leagues that are caused by international breaks. Look at the Premier League: every team has to play about four or five league matches (as well as an FA Cup fixture) in the two/two-and-a-half weeks around the end of December and early January. Removing international breaks without making the season shorter allows these fixtures to be spaced out.

– It gives football fans proper competitive football to watch in a summer that would otherwise have not had any.

Potential negatives:

– It could prompt international FAs to retain the international breaks, but use them for international friendlies, which is worse for clubs as their players will be effected by a larger quantity of meaningless games.

– Doing this for World Cup qualifiers will cause a problem for European teams competing in the Confederations Cup. Despite the fact that the Confederations Cup is, frankly, nothing more than a money-making scandal that nobody’s really interested in, it’s not going to be discontinued any time soon.

I think it’s worth thinking about though, at least for Euro Qualifiers, provided what I mentioned about international friendlies is avoided. But it would never be avoided because, if thinking FIFA and UEFA have the common sense to at least experiment with this is too far-fetched, then them sanctioning less international breaks is certainly bang out of order by their usual pathetic standard.

Nevertheless, spread this idea. More summer entertainment? Less international breaks impacting club football (which will always be better than international football, let’s face it)? What’s not to like?

Right, that’s it for today. More again soon. Until then…

 

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