December 9 – Having championed staging the World Cup every two years, FIFA’s director of development Arsene Wenger now appears to be backtracking over the idea.
Wenger was one of those who backed Gianni Infantino’s concept of a biennial tournament but was quoted by l’Equipe as saying he was no longer committed to the proposal.
“I had been asked to think about it and I thought it was not a bad idea,” said Wenger. “But such a development required a complete review of the qualifying calendar.
“We are not heading towards that today, rather towards four-year cycles alternating with a World Cup, the Women’s World Cup, which is becoming more and more important, the Euros and the Club World Cup, which will be inevitable.”
Surprisingly, however, the former Arsenal manager supports future World Cups being staged in winter like Qatar in order to prevent player burnout.
“If we want to democratise football, we will have to go to African countries where it is impossible to play a World Cup (in summer). We can see it with this edition in Qatar: a World Cup in winter works. Of course, many countries did not have time to prepare well physically.
“But at least they all approached this competition with real mental freshness, which has not always been the case in the past. I remember teams that started a World Cup psychologically tired, because the preparation period had gone badly.”
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