A Humble Proposal

The international friendly has surely become the least exciting type of match in world football. With nothing on the line, players pulling out with dubious injuries and little credit given to teams even if they win big, what is the point in continuing with them? It can be argued that it is necessary to play these games for managers to experiment and work with their squads, who only compete in about six or seven competitive games a year. But I propose a solution.

Between the last two major international tournaments (Euro 2008 and World Cup 2010), England played in twenty matches. Exactly half of these were friendlies. Now imagine if pre-season for clubs contained as many games as the competitive season. It would be seen as ludicrous and fans would show very little interest in the number of uncompetitive games. But what can we do about it? Well, it could be quite simple. Expand the qualification groups for the major tournaments and play more competitive games!

UEFA has 53 member nations. This could split quite easily into five groups of nine and one group of eight. That would leave 16 (or 14) competitive fixtures between tournaments and, maintaining the current number of international match days (which is always subject to change anyway), would be perfectly feasible. Depending on qualification places available (currently 14 or 15 for Euros depending on number of hosts and 13 for the World Cup), the top two could qualify with third place teams going into a play-off tournament, or qualifying based on the best group records. This would also have the effect of ensuring more top teams meet each other in competitive matches outside of just the major tournaments. Furthermore, the matches against the smaller nations would still give managers the opportunity to experiment with their line-ups, while still having the healthy pressure of three points being at stake.

With at least four match days to spare, friendlies could still survive, and would in fact become a more worthwhile start/end of qualification test against teams from different confederations. The friendlies against the likes of Brazil and Argentina, and even teams like Australia or Ghana are always more likely to capture the imagination than the likes of last week’s Denmark vs England match-up.

With the common consensus that top flight club football is of as good, if not better standard than international football, the idea of ‘blooding’ new players in friendlies is rendered useless. If a player is in their national squad, specifically the England squad, they should be prepared to compete for qualification and tournaments. Competing in more vital qualification games would do well to instil the competitive spirit that is so vital to succeed in the big tournaments. Playing so many low intensity friendlies, it is no surprise that teams such as England often flop when the pressure is on. I don’t think it is a coincidence that all five South American teams negotiated the group stage in South Africa, considering they played eighteen (in Uruguay’s case twenty) competitive matches in qualification. Friendlies have become an unnecessary hindrance for most fans of football, and it is high time the authorities did something about it. In the now infamous words of Ian Holloway, ‘FIFA, UEFA, you’re wrong!’