Club football might be the most consistently eye-catching part of today’s beautiful game, but when it comes to the World Cup finals everything stands still – which is why the idea currently being floated of a tournament next summer for teams that failed to qualify for Russia 2018 is absurd to say the least.
Essentially, the proposed competition, dubbed the NIT World Cup Invitational by some commentators, would involve the participation of the United States, Italy and the Netherlands, while the likes of Alexis Sanchez’s Chile, Gareth Bale’s Wales and Edin Dzeko’s Bosnia & Herzegovina are also tipped to be involved.
The idea is that a tournament or collection of glamour friendlies of some sort hosted at MLS or NFL stadiums would take place prior to the World Cup finals in the summer. It’s not yet clear if it will go ahead but if it does it would need to take place before real thing. Regardless, the sheer fact that it has started an excited conversation should be very worrying for anyone who believes in protecting the spiritual core of the beautiful game.
While it has tremendous appeal for so many football fans, whether they are followers of the big teams that won’t appear at Russia or neutrals, it’s tantamount to sacrilege to take the limelight away from the build up to the most historic football tournament of them all.
It says a lot about modern football – how it has grown into a rapid pursuit of money over prestige and the chase of immediate gratification over long-term goals.
If the USA, Chile, Italy, the Netherlands or any of the other potential attendees for this super-team tournament do in fact opt to chase meaningless minutes on a pitch Stateside instead of preparing for well thought-out friendlies to allow them to re-build properly for the next qualification phase, it will not bode well for their respective futures.
Their individual failures to qualify should prompt a post-mortem into what has gone wrong in their differing football cultures, why they have slipped up and what needs to be done to rectify the situation – the last course of action they should be taking is to get into talks to participate in a consolation competition.
Because the States are behind this megabucks idea they are undoubtedly the biggest villains of the piece, particularly the United States Soccer Federation (USSF). For many, the federation’s willingness to promote such an idea is indicative of what state the boardroom culture of football in America is in – where the foundations are neglected and in danger of collapsing beneath a top-heavy structure where image means more than development.
Indeed, it’s not just the States who would be culpable because many of the big teams that have regularly taken qualification to the World Cup finals for granted would be guilty of prioritising silliness over future planning should this scenario come to pass.
It would send out all the wrong signals to so many parties – to the fans of their national teams who are crying out for some level-headed decision making, to the up-and-coming generation of young football fans and to the players on each team’s roster, too. It would be another big step backwards – in the direction of normalising the notion of football as a circus instead of being a platform for joy and entertainment.
With United Soccer Marketing also reportedly involved in the proposed super-tournament, you get a flavour of the motivations behind it all.
The main argument in favour suggests that most football fans would be foolish to ignore a stage where so many of the globe’s hottest talents would gather to play for pride having failed to qualify for the real thing, and although some are already easily fooled by such logic, the reality would surely be much different.
If it gets the go-ahead, one can be guaranteed plenty of hollow victories for the big guns, plenty of over-the-top commentary riddled with glorified Americanisms certifying how big a boost hosting the competition will be for the future of US soccer and a huge pay packet for the USSF, who really shouldn’t be rewarding themselves after a failed qualifying campaign.
