International football is dying. What used to be the undoubted pinnacle of the game, which did more to make football truly global than any club competition ever could, now seems almost an afterthought in comparison with the club game. The apparently universally accepted term “international break” says it all – international football is, if anything, a “break” from what really matters.

Can anything be done or is international football doomed to inevitable decline, to the point where it may cease to exist in the decades ahead? There are several possibilities that could turn it back into the pinnacle of the sport that the game’s governing bodies seem reluctant even to consider.

1. Scrap “Friendlies”

George Orwell said in his famous essay, The Sporting Spirit: “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.” But Orwell was missing the point, because “war minus the shooting” is, of course, not war at all, but rather a healthy outlet for competition between nations.

That is why “friendly” matches are utterly pointless and ultimately even unsporting. They serve no real use at all now, if they ever did. Even if a player excels in a friendly match, it counts for little, as the cry goes up for him to “prove it” in a meaningful match. Scrapping friendlies alone would free up several weeks and weekends throughout the football calendar, instantly reducing fixture congestion and lessening the friction between clubs and countries.

2. Separate the International and Domestic Calendars

This week provides the perfect illustration of why so many football fans, especially in Europe, have come to resent and even loathe international football. What for many years was a title shoot-out in England and still remains one of the Premier League’s standout fixtures – namely, Manchester United versus Arsenal – is inevitably diminished by its close proximity to this week of “friendly” games and other international competition.

Now that top-flight club football is truly global, with the best club sides boasting players from seemingly all continents, it is deeply frustrating that such a signature fixture should be compromised by being played immediately after a period when so many of the top players have been away with their countries. It is entirely likely that neither side will be able to train properly, let alone prepare properly, for the fixture, which will inevitably remove some of its lustre, whatever the result.

The solution is clear: separate the domestic and international calendars. Rather than having international games inserted at regular intervals throughout the season, it would make infinitely more sense to have “blocks” of international games, where three or four fixtures could be played at a time. Ideally, there would only be one such block, right at the end of the season, allowing the club calendar to be completed much earlier. However, if that is not possible, having one block at the start of the season and, if necessary, one in the middle would make a huge difference.

There are obvious logistical difficulties with this proposition, not least with what is now the extraordinary South American World Cup qualifying campaign, where everyone plays against everyone else to the tune of 18 games in total.

The solution to this is to redraw the global map of football to have one “Americas” qualifying group, with teams from North and South America drawn against each other in smaller groups. The same number of teams from both Americas would still qualify, but it would dramatically reduce the number of qualifying games, particularly for the South Americans.

3. Introduce Pre-Qualifying for Weaker Nations

The plethora of teams that never seem to improve and only seem to exist for goal-difference purposes, particularly San Marino and Luxembourg, is proof that there should be a pre-qualifying stage before qualifying proper begins. The smaller, weaker nations would have to fight it out amongst themselves – in other words, they would compete against teams that are similar in strength to themselves.

Undoubtedly, those nations will initially resent the suggestion that they should not be allowed to compete against “the big boys”, but in the long run it will do them good. By actually winning the odd game, they are bound to increase their confidence and their international standing, to the point that when they do face the big nations again they can give a far better account of themselves.

In an increasingly crowded footballing calendar, which seems to pit club against country at every juncture, no one needs to inflict or endure the type of 8-0 hammering that Germany recently handed out to San Marino.

4. Make it Harder to Switch Nationality

Diego Costa is probably the highest-profile player in recent years to have switched his footballing allegiance, when he opted to play for Spain, the country in which he played professionally, ahead of his native Brazil, for whom he made two friendly appearances. It is patently absurd that he could represent one country in a “friendly” game before switching to another country for his supposedly “competitive” debut.

A far better situation would be if players were forced to declare their allegiance from, say, the age of 21 onwards. That would still allow them to represent one country at under-21 level and another at senior level, but it would eradicate the possibility of a player making two debuts at senior international level for two different countries.

The whole point of international football is to pit one footballing nation against another. If players are allowed to pick and choose their footballing nationality in the way that Costa has done, ultimately international football will be utterly diminished and the club game will be the only show in town.

5. Preserve and Protect the Major International Tournaments

This is the area where it is least surprising that football’s governing bodies are likely to act, because so much of their income derives from international competition. Even more perniciously, the all-important votes that football’s administrators rely on mustering as many votes as they can from as many countries as possible to win and then secure their positions.

This is clearly a conflict of interest, where international tournaments are endlessly expanded to the point that the quality of football in the tournaments is inevitably diluted, just so as many teams as possible can compete. Euro 2016 was the latest and possibly worst example of this trend, but FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s latest proposal that there should be 40 or more nations at World Cup tournaments from 2026 onwards shows that even worse prospects lie ahead.

It should be the duty of FIFA, UEFA and the other continental confederations to preserve and protect their major tournaments. The number of competing nations at any such tournament should be capped at a maximum of 32, the current number of teams that qualify for a World Cup finals.

The European Championship demonstrated between 1996 and 2012, when it surpassed the World Cup as the premier international tournament, that 16 is the optimum number, but that cat is already out of the bag. Certainly, there should be no more than 32 teams at any major summer tournament and if that requires redrawing of football’s world map, then so be it.

International football, the one form of the game where money cannot rule absolutely and which is consequently the purest form of the game, needs defending, even from the game’s administrators, and changes like these will help regain interest in it.

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