jtrent238 test blog: World Cup Briefing: Gianni’s Big Ideas

Dec. 16, 2022, 4:20 p.m. Eastern time

Reporting from Qatar

Even Gianni Infantino, it turns out, is not immune to second album syndrome. A month on from the release of the work that made him a star, "Today I Feel," the world's pre-eminent spokesman for the plight of Switzerland's redheads was back at the place where it all began, but he could not quite live up to expectations.

If anything, it all felt just a little derivative. Infantino took as his theme "The Best (World Cup) Ever," apparently blissfully unaware of the self-plagiarism: He had mined that particular seam only four years ago, in his closing remarks at the end of the Russian iteration of this tournament. Still, it would be hypocritical in the extreme to criticize the FIFA president for running out of original material.

Besides, the fact that Infantino's speech to mark the conclusion of the 2022 World Cup was not nearly as risible as the one that had opened it means it should, if anything, be presented as something of a triumph.

He might still have shown no desire to engage with the questions that will haunt this tournament for years — over Qatar's treatment of its migrant workers, over its attitude on gay rights, over the environmental impact, over the point of the whole endeavor — but nor did he make anything actively worse. It is a low bar, but it is a bar cleared nonetheless.

Emboldened by what both he and FIFA's accountants will see as the success of this tournament, he instead spent his time reciting all of the things in the "Ideas" section of the notes app on his phone. A 32-team men's Club World Cup, to begin in 2025. A women's Club World Cup. Something called the FIFA Series, which will involve four teams from different confederations but which has not, from the sound of things, been sketched out much beyond that.

While the motivations for these concepts is self-evident — this is all a power play from FIFA, designed to coalesce more of the game around itself and, crucially, further away from UEFA, European soccer's governing body — it is not the case that they are all objectively bad ideas.

A women's Club World Cup makes sense, at least in terms of raw economics and exposure. To an extent, so does an expanded men's version. The problem, whenever Infantino starts thinking, is that nothing ever goes deeper than the surface. Establishing a richer Club World Cup, for example, would mean directing colossal sums of money to a handful of teams on each continent. That, in turn, would destabilize domestic and regional competitions around the world. Has FIFA considered the impact of that, or how to offset it? No, probably not.

Indeed, the only idea emanating from Infantino that was unquestionably encouraging was his admission that FIFA is reassessing the format of the next World Cup, set to be held across North America in 2026. The organization had previously planned to separate the 48 qualifying teams into 16 groups of three, an unwieldy, asymmetrical formula that would have had a negative impact on the opening weeks of the tournament.

That, now, apparently will be scrapped, abandoned after the drama of the conclusion of the group phase here. More likely, now, is 12 groups of four. It is not ideal — eight teams would qualify for the knockout stages by having finished third in their group, and it stretches the group stage out to a mammoth 72 games — but it is, without question, an improvement.

FIFA has been in Qatar, at the most controversial World Cup of all time, for a month. For a decade and more, it has been pummeled with criticism over its indulgence of autocratic governments. It says a lot, really, that the lesson it has learned after all of that is that, when it comes down to it, it's better to have groups of four. Anything deeper, anything more meaningful, will have to wait.

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