ANOTHER 48 DOURS
Hugh McIlvanney, the great sportswriter once of this parish, called it right. “Of course,” he wrote, “the political and financial pressures that persuaded the organisers to raise the number of competing nations to this outrageous figure leave the World Cup desperately flawed. There has been too much dilution of the basic elements of death-or-glory drama and rough, instant justice that have always been regarded as inseparable from cup football. No amount of hard-nosed accountancy can justify the anomalies created.” The year was 1982. The outrageous figure was 24. As of Tuesday morning, we know the 2026 tournament will include 48 teams.
The author of this latest increase is newish Fifa overlord Gianni Infantino, who just a couple of weeks ago was happily telling anyone who would listen that his ideal was “a World Cup of 48 teams which would in fact be a 32-team format because we have seen that the ideal format is 32 teams”, a puzzling non-sequitur that Fifa’s council considered entirely unconvincing, deciding instead to back a World Cup of 48 teams which would in fact be a 48-team format. It will start with 16 tiny little three-team groups, in each of which by definition no two games can be played at once. As it happens the very same 1982 tournament so disliked by McIlvanney was also the last time any team had to watch on helpless while the final game in their group took place, Fifa rapidly mandating simultaneous kick-offs after West Germany and Austria played out a limp, mutually-convenient, Algeria-eliminating 1-0 in what became known as the Disgrace of Gijon. And now, reader, they’re back! But don’t worry, Fifa has already thought about this problem. And its cleverest idea is to do away with draws altogether, deciding deadlocked group games by means of a penalty shootout. Which prompts another trip down memory lane to the early 80s …
It’s February 1981, and with attendances across the English league dwindling chairmen attend an extraordinary meeting in Solihull to debate how best to make the game more attractive. Among the subjects up for discussion is a change to the way points are awarded. Three options are on the table: to stick with the existing two for a win, and one for a draw; to increase the rewards for victory to three points, with a stalemate still worth one; or a complicated system proposed by Leicester City that would give two points to the team who scored most goals in the first half, two points to the team who scored most in the second half – or a point for each team for each drawn half – with a two-point bonus for securing an overall victory, meaning a team could get as many as six points for winning a single game, or two for drawing. They pick option two. “Certainly three points for a win means there will be renewed interest next season,” trills the league’s secretary, Graham Kelly. “It was felt that the time was right to change and that we could not lose anything by trying it.”
It turned out they could: the next season average top-flight attendances were down 9%, and they continued to slip for a couple more years before hitting the postwar floor of 18,834 in 1983-84. Still, the experiment was considered a success, to such an extent that in 1993 Fifa decided to adopt it for their own World Cup, Sepp Blatter predicting that it would “encourage attacking, adventurous football and avoid draws”. The 36 group-stage games the following year yielded eight draws (precisely as many as in 1990), though Fifa was convinced enough to make the system, in Blatter’s words, “universal and binding for everybody” from that year onwards.
History has shown that offering winning teams three times as many points as are available for drawing, rather than two, encourages – though doesn’t guarantee – attacking play. Now Fifa is essentially offering teams the chance of getting three points for a draw. What effect do they think that’s going to have on the mentality of all their newly invited mediocre place-fillers? The Fiver’s crystal ball is suddenly full of ultra defensive snoozefests between wildly-mismatched opponents, though some of them may just be replays of Liverpool v Plymouth. So we give you the new-look Infantino-era World Cup group stage: the bad news is that it’s going to be no fun whatsoever; the good news is that it’s going to be extremely brief. Which sounds rather like what you might say to someone as you strap them into an electric chair. The Fiver is fairly certain this is not a good sign.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I played a game at Birmingham City on a Monday. Then on the Tuesday, I was made redundant from Bentley Motors and on the Wednesday, Arsenal came in. I drove down on the Wednesday and trained with the first team on Thursday and Friday. Then they offered me a deal” – new Arsenal signing Cohen Bramall’s Craig David tribute isn’t quite so catchy.
FIVER LETTERS
“Following on from Chris Oakley’s missive (yesterday’s Fiver letters) when he discussed ‘inane and constantly employed comments’ of commentators and the ‘woodwork’ (let’s not even mention the fact that they haven’t been made from wood in about 100 years), more ridiculous comments include: goalkeepers ‘electing’ to punch; never deciding or choosing, always an election of an idea; ‘genuine’ pace; it would be silly to just say fast/speedy. I am sure there are others but I need to go and do some work” – Karl Gibbons.
“What about ‘the ball hit the empty net’? When was the net ever full? And full with what? Air?” – Brian Butler.
“Why are crosses always ‘whipped’ in, and deflections ‘wicked’?” – Mark Cherrie.
“Yesterday, my email flashes to life and there in front of me for the first time in ages is The Fiver. I do my usual and skip straight to the letters and see the mildly panicked tone of people asking where you’d been. Some fool tried to sign up three times (surely a record? Most of us regret signing up just the once). These letters bemused me, not so much because people were desperate for The Fiver, but more that they’d even realised you’d disappeared in the first place. I hadn’t” – Sam Carpenter.
“Thanks so much for not mentioning my team Taxpayers FC and our hugely embarrassing capitulation at the Stadium of Nightmares in your FA Cup piece (yesterday’s Fiver). If no one draws any attention to it, perhaps we can pretend it didn’t happen. Oh” – Andy Marriott.
• Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And if you’ve nothing better to do you can also tweet The Fiver. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day is … Andy Marriott.
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BITS AND BOBS
You’ll be shocked, shocked, to learn that former England manager Sam Allardyce has brought Sammy Lee on board at Crystal Palace.
Schalke look like snaffling Bayern’s Holger Badstuber on loan from right under Manchester City’s nose, even without giving him the big sell. “If he comes to us he won’t have a guaranteed place,” sniffed club suit Christian Heidel.
Arsenal are having a chinwag with Borussia Dortmund about Gedion Zelalem.
Real Madrid have farmed midfield scamp Martin Odegaard to Heerenveen on an 18-month loan. “This is an opportunity to show what I can do,” he whooped.
Much like his free-kick, Mohd Faiz Subri bent the Puskás Award judges to his will and won the gong for goal of 2016. “Your achievement in the Fifa Puskás Award 2016 will inspire all Malaysian footballers and also makes the country proud,” cheered prime minister Najib Razak.
And the Premier League pundit wars of 2017 have entered the Eamon Dunphy phase. “They’re hopeless,” he huffed. “The number of guys who don’t actually know the game and don’t engage their brain. What really baffles me is what the television companies are thinking – BT Sport have invested about £2bn in rights. They have the goalkeeper David James and Rio Ferdinand. They don’t respect their audience.”
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
AC Jimbo was in Zurich schmoozing it up at the Fifpro awards so join Max Rushden and co for your Monday dollop of Football Weekly.
STILL WANT MORE?
Proper Journalism’s David Conn offers his thoughts on this World Cup 2026 farce. Paul MacInnes, meanwhile, tries to get his head around how it will all work.
Simon Burnton recalls Hull’s class of 1952 as they prepare for the Milk Cup semi-final against Manchester United.
From last week, but hey: the fastest football penalties ever awarded.
An alternative team of 2016, courtesy of Martin Laurence.
The Best Fifa World Football Awards went down on Monday. Here are some photos.
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