Robert O'Connor

Change is coming to world football. In 2020 a practice which has underscored every major international championship since 1930 will be temporarily shelved and the winds of experimentation will bellow in the once starched sails of tournament football. UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino has called the change, that will see the European Championship hosted in 13 cities around Europe,‘an exciting thing’ whilst president Michel Platini is predicting the 2020 instalment of Europe’s premier competition will be ‘never bettered’. But as the deadline for host cities to confirm their interest ticks closer, the governing body are preparing for a backlash from stubborn traditionalists who see their interests threatened by change. 

FIFA president Sepp Blatter, having recovered his puff from a busy summer of talking himself in and out of knots over the ‘Brazilian Spring’, had plenty to say back in March when flesh was first added to the bare bones of UEFA’s new model. Never one to sit quietly when his fellow power-brokers begin kicking up dust the FIFA president was flat-footed in his evaluation: “A tournament should be played in one county. That is how you create identity and euphoria.” Perhaps it should not be a surprise that Blatter’s first concern is for those two bastions of public consciousness, since it has typically been through a by-proxy association with national good-feeling that FIFA has protected its reputation against accusations that its host nations are being systematically exploited. 

But what the Brazilian uprising showed is that the age of the vanity showpiece event is entering an unstable phase. Football supporters, whilst champions of their nation’s cultural capital abroad, are also domestic taxpayers and it is their identity as the latter that looks set to define the relationship between FIFA and its public moving forward, just as it did in South America this summer. 2020, stripped of its nationalistic focus, might provide Blatter and co with a window into how a major international championship might be managed at an economic and infrastructural level without the safety net of hysterical nationwide pageantry. Whether they are ready to confront that challenge however is another matter, and  the possibility of stretching the European Championship continent wide will be seen as a threat by FIFA if calls go up for the practice to be replicated for future World Cups.

 

Brazil showed FIFA that the challenges of micro-managing a nationwide event of this scale are changing, and here too might the governing body find reasons to be cautious. Advancements in technology are making protection of digital copyrights more problematic and public passivity towards the governing body’s corporate strategies can no longer be guaranteed. As the World Cup’s commercial reach reels in increasing numbers of partner organisations monitoring the delivery of the global showpiece is becoming ever-more complex, and decentralisation from a single country to a whole continent is a headache Blatter and the executive committee will feel they can do without as the winds of change howl.   

For UEFA, how well Platini and Infantino play their hand over the financial investments demanded of the hosts of their Euro for Europe will go a long way towards making or breaking public opinion of 2020, and the recent Confederations Cup has dealt them a useful turn. Major public investments in sporting showpieces set against a backdrop of hamstrung economic performances have never seemed less justifiable, certainly in the global public consciousness, and this summer the football authorities felt the full force of the demand for an alternative blueprint that decentralises the burden of expenses. Step forward Platini.  

Whether or not UEFA have written up a plan that will satisfy an increasingly restless football community, not to mention a seething electorate in the one part of the world to date that has voted with its feet on the issue, remains to be seen. But it seems likely that a number of players in the global football partnership will be on board. The chosen national associations and their relative governments will find promising the prospect of increased tourism, foreign investment and international attention without the kind of outlay previously required to stage a tournament single-handedly. The more developed footballing countries will find venues, facilities and provisions needing very little attention to welcome three major international fixtures, whereas the smaller nations will find the risks of investment offset by having to stump up a far smaller outlay.

Meanwhile more fans will benefit from having tournament football brought within distance of a budget airline flight, and UEFA have made early promises that the draw will be sympathetic to the travel plans of supporters with a vested interest in games. With more fans moving manageable distances around Europe, airlines, train providers and coach companies will also welcome a short-term boom.   

For the naysayers whose oppositions to the plans stem from a desire to cling to the status quo their doubts are understandable given the international climate. The pragmatics of tournament football have rarely been so questioned since five European nations set off on their two-week trip across the ocean to Uruguay in 1930, and there are those at FIFA who would rather see the dust settle on their most recent crisis before ideas blowing over from Europe threaten to upset the apple cart all over again.

As a footnote it is worth remembering the huge practical difficulties that had to be overcome when the international championship sprang to life over 80 years ago. Back in 1930 it went against the grain of seasonal football to bring all competing teams into one location to compete over a short period, but it happened because transport limitations said it had to. Now the world has contracted – distance no longer makes peculiar demands of time and space – and the local unity that comes from sending tournaments to a fixed abode has come at the cost of leaving the wider continent feeling fragmented and remote. By 2020 Europe might just be ready to host its first championship on truly continental terms. 

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