What is international football?

International Football

This past week, we had World Cup qualifiers. This meant that many players from the best leagues left their teams to represent their home country. While some may like the change of pace of an international break from the regular season, I personally despise it with a passion. However, I believe that everyone should be well educated about how international football works in the first place, as it can become complicated at times. I, myself, didn’t know a whole lot about how international football worked before writing this article. The three topics I will discuss are 1. how players qualify for national teams, 2. which tournaments teams can enter, and 3. my evaluation of the way the schedule plays out. 

How are Players Selected to Play in the First Place?

You may think that a player is only eligible to play for the country he or she was born in. However, it's more complicated than that. Players are allowed to play for any country that their close relatives have been associated with. For example, Lionel Messi could have actually played for Spain. Yes, that means that the Atomic Flea could have won the World Cup that has eluded him. His great-grandfather was born in Spain, making Messi eligible to play for them. The French national team’s squad is composed of lots of players, many of whom could have been eligible for other countries. I believe that this is really important because it allows for players with different backgrounds to mix, which makes the game more diverse. It protects players who may be disliked in their own country, allowing them to still play for a different national team. Players need to feel safe, and you simply can’t when the country that you’re playing for doesn’t like you. 

How do Tournaments and Competitions Work?

There are many competitions at the international level. The Copa America hosts 10 countries from South America to battle against each other (plus two other random teams), The AFC Asian Cup hosts the top Asian countries, and the CONCACAF Gold Cup has North America, Central America, and the Caribbean all duke it out for the prize. However, the two most famous tournaments are the Euros and the FIFA World Cup. The Euros only take the best European teams, while the World Cup, the most famous tournament on the planet, takes only the best countries on earth. Every four years, the 32 teams that have qualified for the Euros or the World Cup, will travel to the country that is hosting it. Usually, there is a group phase in which four random teams play against each other one by one, and the two teams with the most points move on to the knockout phase. For the Euros, a team in 3rd place can still make it out of their group, if they have enough points. 

Last week, the international break was in full swing. This stage is like a much larger and more complicated group phase, where the ranking of a country determines who they will play against in the qualifiers. FIFA uses official matches to rank the teams. (This includes international friendlies, where two countries play in a one-off, without a prize.) This ensures that the qualifying groups are as balanced as possible. However, this system isn’t watertight; teams can still try to find loopholes to gain advantages. For example, in 2018, Poland didn’t play any international friendlies, which gave them an advantage when qualifying, because they didn’t have to go up against any tough opponents. Hilariously enough, they finished bottom of their group in the World Cup. Poland is just one of many examples of teams trying to cut corners. FIFA should have a set number of international friendlies that every country has to meet in order to participate at a major tournament.

What's My Opinion on International Friendlies? 

While I understand that international games are important, the schedules are all so wrong. FIFA is really only looking out for one thing—and that’s revenue. We already know that FIFA is run by greedy, corrupt individuals, or else they wouldn’t be hosting a World Cup in a desert, for which thousands of trapped workers are forced to work and die, while FIFA gets its brand new stadiums. Players will get exhausted when they travel there and back to compete against other countries, when they should be resting. In the year leading up to a major tournament, these games increase. All of this fatigue could make them prone to injury, which could hurt their club career as well. This whole thing is just one big domino effect. Players shouldn’t be expected to play 2 games in one week, no matter how much they are being paid. They are still human beings who have a limit. 

Instead of doing what they normally do, UEFA and FIFA should implement an international break system that (A) allows players to have adequate rest and recovery, (B) make games that won’t take too long to set up and carry out, and (C) makes the fixtures interesting for the viewers (because seriously, international friendlies bore me to tears). I recommend that international friendlies be mostly played in the very beginning of the year, and only a few at the end of the year. Here is why: From December to March, in what I call the fixture season, games come thick and fast, sometimes leaving clubs only two days’ rest before the next game. Incredibly, international friendlies do occur in this stage. However, up until then, games are spread out much more, which is how most international games should be played. I also think that some fixtures could be played during the summer (but only in those summers that don't have major tournaments), however, not so many that players don’t get their needed rest. 

Conclusion

International football is a jumble of all sorts. Obviously I love watching the World Cup and other big events, but the matches that decide who plays in them have some questionable scheduling. I have voiced how I think it could be helped. If UEFA and FIFA also bring lots of attention to these qualifiers, then maybe England pulverizing San Marino (a really low ranked team) 5–0 won’t be such a boring game to watch. Once we get through these fixtures, it will be only a matter of months before Euro 2021 kicks off, and that’s where the excitement really begins.