If I was President of FIFA...

Barely a day goes by without somebody asking me "Nessy, what would you do if you were somehow elected President of FIFA?"

My usual answer is "About six years, with a good lawyer."

But seriously, folks...

For me, the Presidency of FIFA is becoming a poisoned chalice, anyone announcing interest in the post becomes the subject of intense attention from the media and the FBI. I'd scrap the whole system.

The post of President of FIFA should be a ceremonial position. He or she could become a figurehead for the game, in the same way that the Queen of England is the figurehead for the Commonwealth. Turn up, shake hands, cut ribbons, smile. An ambassador of the game. The sort of thing Pele has been doing for the last twenty years when he wasn't advertising erectile dysfunction.

The power now vested in the Presidency of FIFA is ludicrous, and the temptation, opportunity and expectation of corruption that goes with the job has made it one of the world's highest profile first class seats on a gravy train of astonishing profitability. For a very long time, the vast financial resources at the disposal of the "non-profit" organisation that is FIFA, have been treated as the private kitty of the President, to distribute at will as and where he chose. No wonder he has always had vocal supporters, he could be very generous with other people's money.

The circus should stop. If there is no popular outcry for the abolition of FIFA itself (which amazes me, frankly) then the reforms needed have to take on the entire structure, beginning with the role of President.

The President of FIFA should be someone associated with the game in the public eye. It's 2015, and by coincidence, it's twenty years since the criteria for winning the Ballon D'Or was extended to non-European players. George Weah was the first African winner in 1995. Why not give the Presidency to Ballon D'Or alumni as a matter of course, appointed annually, and expected to be the face of the game for twelve months, but crucially not in charge of the distribution of any funds. Obviously, Ballon D'Or winners are too exclusive a group, it has to be open to women in the game as well, but let's find some way to make the Presidency a reward for services to football, and a way to celebrate the game's greats. The President should be someone known as a footballer, whether that's a high-profile amateur or a Golden Boot winner.

FIFA is a corporation, and should be run by a professional board that is answerable to a forum made up from the national associations and, vitally, the clubs. Football, after all, is a club game. The World Cup may be its highest profile tournament, but it is in the club game that it finds its true expression, where the greatest coaches make their names, and the greatest players do most of their best work. The clubs need a greater say in the running of the game. (And the fans need a greater say in the running of the clubs.) It is the clubs that do most of the grass-roots work, identifying and coaching young players, working with local communities to promote football, developing new coaches and providing facilities for people to learn and play. In exchange for control of FIFA, the clubs need to offer a firm commitment to putting a fixed percentage of their income into all of these areas.

Funds given out by FIFA should be distributed exclusively according to clearly set criteria. An association's grass roots programme should be fully costed and evaluated before funding, and reviewed regularly for execution and progress. If that association wants to apply for more at a later date, they should be able to account for every penny spent.

The World Cup should be organised and run as a seperate entity from FIFA itself.

International Football should be confined to late January/early February and August. There should be no competitive football played in July, or in the first two weeks of January.

Qualifying for the World Cup should, where possible, take place through mini-tournaments. These would be staged in neutral countries.

This would:

• Give more countries the opportunity to host meaningful international tournaments, 
• Reduce the number of games required as there would be no need to play home and away, 
• Provide an opportunity for teams to train and play together over a sustained period rather than the ad-hoc basis of the current system, 
• Create more of a spectacle, 
• Remove the irritating stop-start breaks to the club football season, and 
• Give some much-needed impetus to the currently over-long qualification process.

There should be a secondary World Cup style competition, with nations able to choose which to enter. This would provide tournament experience to developing football nations, as well as reducing the number of dead-rubber matches in qualification currently. This could be called the Silver Cup.

There should be a rotation of continents, with Europe, South America and the Rest of the World each hosting one in three tournaments. This reflects the importance of these two continents in the history of the game, and the presence of the greatest football supporters concentrated in these areas.

Nations that wish to host the World Cup should have at the very least qualified for it in the recent past.  They should have a professional top flight division with promotion and relegation to a lower tier.

As far as the club game goes, I would want to see fan ownership become the norm, and fan representation on club boards as a prerequisite for participation in Confederation-Level tournaments (Champions League, etc)

European Super League

A New Approach?

For many years now, the idea has been floated of a “European Super League” of football. It was the concept that drove the evolution of the European Cup into the modern Champions League, but it is an idea that has never gone away. Cryptic remarks from people with senior connections at Barcelona, Real, Milan and some of the biggest English clubs every few years make it clear that a break-away competition is still very much on the agenda for some of the continent’s major players.

And it’s the “break-away” aspect that seems to most disturb the supporters of these clubs. Suggestions have included a permanent roster of clubs with no promotion or relegation, a competition totally divorced from the domestic game. This, let’s be frank, is a fantasy, and an unworkable one. It seems incredible that revenues from a Super League could be much higher than they are from the Champions League already, and the major English, Spanish, Italian and German clubs still make more money from competing in their domestic championships than they do on their sojourns into Europe. And the fans don’t want to be removed from their domestic leagues, either. The traditional rivalries of club football rarely extend across national boundaries. Liverpool have had a series of high-profile games against Milan, but they don’t compare to the passionate, day-to-day rivalry with Everton. Travelling around the country on awaydays is a big part of the football experience for thousands of fans, and while trips abroad are always welcome, the prospect of nineteen away days across the continent is beyond the financial means of the ordinary fan. The third major obstacle is the disconnection between domestic form and European qualification. As things stand, a great club with a great manager can rise up the divisions and, in theory, go on to lift the biggest trophy in club football. Without that aspiration, the domestic leagues just become dead-end competitions, breeding grounds to be scouted by the elite minority. The status of the Premier League would be less than that currently enjoyed by the Championship. There is, at least, promotion from the Championship into the Premier League and that drives on the clubs in that competition.

So is there an answer? Or are we to stick with the current compromise format, a Champions League which is not a league and contains many who are not Champions? The idea behind the CL was to increase the guaranteed number of games for teams involved. Now, it seems, a lot of teams still feel there aren’t enough, but the fixture congestion they already experience means it is very difficult to expand the completion in its current form. The Europa League, an attempt to give the old UEFA Cup some of the sparkle and glamour of the senior competition, has resulted in a bloated mess of a competition where teams play an endless round of group matches after which nearly all of them qualify only to be knocked out in the next round by Champions League drop-outs. Most team managers view the thing simply as a distraction from their domestic targets.

There is, however, a solution. And that solution is to make European football into its own pyramid with promotion and relegation.

First, you need to reduce the domestic fixture list. Every top flight league should consist of no more than sixteen teams. Then we create our new Super League pyramid. Any club which has been in its home nation’s top division for two or more seasons can apply.

Our pyramid has three tiers.

In the top division, the “true” Super League, sixteen teams compete, home and away, for the title of Champions of Europe. The bottom four of these are relegated to tier 2. The teams in 11^th and 12 positions go into the play-off pool.

In tier 2, we have four divisions of 16 teams each. Teams from the same domestic league should be kept apart if possible. The winners of each league get promoted to the Super League. Two runners up from each league go into the play-off pool along with the 11^th and 12^th placed teams from the top division. From this pool, 2 teams are promoted or reinstated in the top division. The bottom four clubs in each division are relegated.

In tier 3, we have up to sixteen divisions of up to sixteen teams. Teams from the same domestic league are kept apart. The winners of each division are promoted.

The exact size of tier 3 will depend on the number of applications to compete. There should always be a multiple of four divisions for promotion/relegation purposes. There should be a minimum of 12 teams in each division. Divisions should not vary in size by more than 2 teams.

Any team relegated from their domestic top-flight will be dropped out of the pyramid, and replaced from below.

This structure allows for up to 336 European Clubs to take part, but all of them are playing for the chance to win promotion to the Super League itself. In fact, there is no other way in, even by winning a domestic championship.

It is a huge competition, but it is fair, and no team is, in principle, more than two good seasons away from the top table. The competition is never a distraction but a vital, vibrant competition, running in parallel with the domestic season. It provides teams from smaller leagues with regular ongoing competition.

Why Winning The Carling Cup Matters to Liverpool

John Henry and Tom Werner have a mission to promote Liverpool Football Club in their own country, a huge, strange land where "soccer" is mainly a game for children and grown men play netball for massive amounts of cash.
America is a land where narrative has power, founded on a dream. A land of settlers, each coming from other lands, bringing their own culture, their own stories. It's no coincidence that Hollywood is in the USA, the American people love a good story, be it funny, sentimental or, above all, triumphant. They see themselves as the world's leaders, the winners of WWII and the Cold War, the big players on the world money markets, the creators of much of the technology that drives the internet age. If they are going to get interested in a football team, that team needs to win something (with the help of some good-old American know-how, naturally)

Not much is often said about our club chairman, Tom Werner. John Henry usually puts himself up as the face of FSG, the senior investor, principle owner, what have you. Henry is a speculator by trade, a man who plays financial markets and has done excellently from it. That's what he knows. Werner, on the other hand, is a media collossus.

This is the man who made Roseanne and The Cosby Show, That 70's Show and vehicles for stars like Whoopi Goldberg and Cybill Shepherd. There are very few people in TV with the kind of track record of Tom Werner, and with that comes a list of contacts of people in television, a lot of whom will owe their careers to the man. If Tom Werner makes a phonecall, it gets answered.

So if we can beat Cardiff (and let's take nothing for granted here, we've struggled against poorer sides) you can bet images of Steven Gerrard lifting that cup will be making their way onto every sports bulletin on US TV. And that audience doesn't have the cynical attitudes to the Carling Cup of some of the British media, because 95% of them have no idea what the fuck the Carling Cup is.

All they will see is Liverpool, the winners. And here's the narrative, Henry and his boys have come over to the club when it was on its knees, when it hadn't won a trophy for several years, and they have delivered. In the same way that Rafa, Luis Garcia and Alonso made Liverpool the second side for every football supporter in Spain on that night in Istanbul, millions of Americans could start to be drawn towards LFC as a lifestyle. As they say in the movies, this could be beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Henderson/Spearing

by Guardian Chalkboards











I've tried to compare Jordan Henderson's passing to Jay Spearing.

First, a few important points. Jay and Jordan have different roles in the team, the point here isn't to say one is better, just to look at how they both play and compare what they do.

The first thing you notice is that Jay made more passes. He plays a more central role, so that's to be expected, most of our attacking movements will go through Jay, and as a ball-winner, he has to lay it off whenever he wins possession. Spearing made 68 passes, with a reasonable 58 finding the target. (About 85%)

Jordan, on the other hand, made 52 passes, with 40 of them finding their man. (About 76%) The key point here is that six of those lost passes were into the box. Spearing just doesn't operate in this area, he played a couple of very long balls forward, one of which found Kuyt just outside the area, and one, from inside his own half, that was lost in a similar position. Henderson is clearly playing a more attacking game, those balls into the box can either fall to a team-mate, in which case we're likely to score, or to an opponent, but not in a dangerous part of the field for us.

So the risks of losing possession for Spearing, who plays a lot deeper, are greater than they are for Henderson. Give it away in front of your own penalty area and you give the other team a chance to score, lose it around their box, and you don't. Henderson can afford to take more risks, in fact, he has to, as it is harder to find a man in that part of the field.

This is reflected in the percentages, with Spearing seemingly passing with more success than Henderson, but as I say, given their different roles, and the levels of risk involved, that is to be expected. On another day, Henderson could have ended up with three assists from those kind of passes.