Blatter blather

[Jantje]

With Blatter coming out & saying the Prem has to reduce to 18 teams do FIFA have any real power to enforce this, i thought UEFA ran club football in Europe & FIFA ran international football. I reckon the Prem chairmen will tell Blatter to piss off if he tries to push this thru . Same with Spain who are not happy with Blather either.tdwn:

[B_i_N]

In an ideal world an 18 team premiership would be ideal for England, and for teams competing in the European competitions. Financially though the 20 clubs don't want to relinquish 4 games of income a season, including potential TV income from those games. If there were only 18 teams, then the big ones would be off again touring the world trying to sell their wares in distant corners of the world, therefore giving no advantage whatsoever to the national team, since their players would be tired from all the travelling.
FIFA want it because it thinks it will benefit them, the premiership doesn't want it because they will lose financially. Who do you think will win this?

On another note, don't think the Premiership is on the small teams' side. If they had their way, there would be the 20 biggest teams in the country with NO relegation or promotion. It would be a closed league with all the other clubs used to feed it.

On an even bigger note, the top 4 or 5 teams would if they had their way I believe, just be part of a European league. The only domestic games they would play outside it would be in the FA cup. THAT'S IT.

[Jantje]

Also the Prem have a new TV agreement based on a collective of a 20 club payout so how would FIFA get round that, i can't see them compensating the 2 clubs who lose out

[B_i_N]

The thing that FIFA have to be careful of is if say Spain and England decided to withdraw to form their own association. Italy, France and Germany would probably follow suit and that would be the end of FIFA. FIFA could not exist financially if it only had banana republics as members.

[Jantje]

If Blatter persists with this then the G14 will also flex their muscles and threaten a breakaway

[B_i_N]

The G14 would like to breakaway if they could, but they won't be allowed to on their own. They would need their national football associations to break away as well, otherwise the G14 would be ostracized by the rest of world football and most likely would not survive a few seasons.

[king billy]

Is the decision making committee of FIFA not made up of 4 members? 3 of which are England, Wales and Scotland?....

No way this will ever happen IMO, the premier league is the richest in the world - no way it'd be alienated, Blatters dipping his toe in the water prior to his campaign for re-election!!!!

[Yeadon Bantam]

The guys a joke, didnt he once want to try free kicks instead of throw ins and all sorts of other crazy shite made up rules, he also keeps trying to americanise it all too...

[Jantje]

When is he up for re-election? I think he's running scared cos proper football people like Michel Platini have said they are going to stand & he could blow Blatter out of the water

[B_i_N]

Actually Platini isn't much better in my opinion. Platini would like to turn the world cup into a third world, world cup. He really does champion tiny little banana republics who have never seen a real football.

IMO it's nice that a few small teams make it each year. Northern Ireland did really well in 94 (was it?) Camaroon surprised everyon in 1990. T&T have already made a mark in this one. But at the end of the day it's the big teams which matter and draw the crowds and interest. England, Brazil, France, Argentine, Holland, Germany, Italy. When these teams play each other the rest of the footballing world stops to watch.

Personally I think the whole FIFA thing is out of control, it doesn't matter who runs it. They will still try to be politically correct and the president will probably be dreaming of winning a nobel peace price for awarding the world cup finals to somewhere like Haiti for the sake of peace.
Quite honestly I hope the South African world cup in four years time will be a FIASCO, not because I have something against SA, but because it was politically fixed by Blatter and his FIFA buddies, Platini being a major player.

[Rick]

Quite honestly I hope the South African world cup in four years time will be a FIASCO, not because I have something against SA, but because it was politically fixed by Blatter and his FIFA buddies, Platini being a major player.

Going off recent history it seems South Africa is more than capable of hosting the world cup and they did a decent job hosting the Rugby World Cup in 95 I think it was.

They didn't do to bad hosting the cricket world cup the only problems was allowing it to be co-hosted which led to England boycotting certain games.

I think the World cup in South Africa is going to be good from a totally selfish point of view because there will be little to no time difference so we won't have to watch games at 6am like we did when the world cup was in Japan.

[meelin]

The guys a joke, didnt he once want to try free kicks instead of throw ins and all sorts of other crazy shite made up rules, he also keeps trying to americanise it all too...

When the yanks had the World Cup, I do believe that they tried to have the games in four quarters, in order to enhance advertising revenue.

[Yeadon Bantam]

HA, o dear like i say he is a joke!

[B_i_N]

When the yanks had the World Cup, I do believe that they tried to have the games in four quarters, in order to enhance advertising revenue.

I know they were talking about having TIME OUTS, which would have been ideal for the Yank channels to push their commercials on everyone.
Though I must admit personally I do like the idea of a time out in each half. How that would affect the flow of the game is debatable. Of course it was never implemented.

In one way I'm glad that football has not really taken off in the US, because when it does, that's it, all the best players will play for US franchises.