The move for a biennial world cup has again suffered a major setback as UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin has warned his FIFA counterpart Gianni Infantino against pushing ahead with a vote on the plan, saying there would be “terrible consequences” to such a move.
In a recent meeting, FIFA’s ruling council agreed to hold a global summit of all 211 member associations on December 20 to discuss the proposals for a World Cup to be held every two years rather than every four years.
In view of this, FIFA will now wait for the results of a feasibility study and also an economic analysis of the financial impact of the extra World Cup, which are expected to be delivered before the summit.
Infantino said “We will continue with the objective of reaching a consensus with solutions that work for everyone’s benefit. By hosting a global summit later this year, we will now have the opportunity to present one plan and to provide feedback to all our FIFA member associations”.
The FIFA president had taken part in a conference call with UEFA’s 55 national federations and the proposals received widespread criticism and rejection.
UEFA president firmly maintained that “I am seriously asking you and FIFA not to push for a vote, because that could have terrible consequences for football in general,” said the UEFA president.
“I don’t think it would be wise to go for a vote on a matter like that. Not just because there will be severe consequences that we will have to take but also because the stakeholders like clubs and leagues don’t have a vote and this idea is detrimental to their existence,” he added.
In the recent meeting, a report commissioned and presented by UEFA estimated a shortfall of between 2.5 and 3 billion euros ($2.9bn to 3.5bn) across four years for European federations if FIFA were to adopt its plan to switch to a biennial World Cup.
However, Infantino believes that reshaping of world football is germane to safeguard the future of the sport.
He said “I believe as well that the enemy of football is not the World Cup or is not FIFA but it is other activities that young boys and young girls are running after today”.
“And we need to see how jointly and together we can bring them back to be interested in football.”
