Can we fix international breaks

International breaks are a necessary evil but the overall system is completely broken

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International football is awesome.

Let’s clarify that statement a bit. International tournaments are awesome. The World Cup is amazing, the Euros are great, the Copa America is pretty cool. The other international matches played home and away throughout the year mostly suck.

Now here’s the problem. For two of the three aforementioned tournaments we need to figure out who’s actually playing in them. There’s far more countries than available spots. Therefore a qualifying system was created that may have its flaws but is mostly good.

To ensure we had time to play these matches FIFA designates certain dates on the calendar for FIFA matchdays where clubs must release their players if they are called up. There’s two weeks in March, June, September, October, and November. Typically enough for 10 matches a year.

I’ll concede that the October, November, and March international breaks are a “necessary evil” that need to occur to give us something amazing further down the road. It’s the September international break that needs to go to hell,

The timing of it couldn’t be worse.

You get all excited to start the club season in mid-August, you play two or three matches and then suddenly all the momentum and excitement the start of the season has generated gets put on pause to go play some crappy international for two weeks. To make matters worse, the transfer window typically closes right before the break, so while fans get excited for new signings, they then have to wait two weeks to see those new signings. And if those signings happen to be internationals then they’ll hardly even get a chance to train with their new club before their first match.

There’s a simple solution here. Get rid of the September international break.

With that extra time you can play an additional weekend and midweek fixture while still leaving one midweek free early in the season. That would enable you to create a winter break in the middle of the season and end the season a week earlier.

With that extra time at the end of the season you can tack on an additional fixture to the June fixture dates. You know, when the weather is much nicer and it’s better for fans to travel.

Cutting down from 10 international fixtures a year to nine is no big deal considering we already have too many fixtures. World Cup or Euro qualifying only takes about 10 matches which is arguably too long to begin with. Qualifying is set up to ensure the big nations reach the tournament so there’s very few actually intriguing matches. Most of the time you’re just watching Germany vs Armenia or Croatia vs Malta.

The UEFA Nations League was created specifically to put competitive matches on the calendar in place of friendlies when teams weren’t playing qualifying matches. In other words, there were already too many fixture dates and teams had to fill them with drab friendlies.

The Nations League has been a success in that these “competitive” matches are more entertaining than friendlies but even though 3/10 is greater than 2/10 that doesn’t make 3/10 particularly good.

The idea behind the Nations League was admirable. Competitive matches between top countries that we wouldn’t otherwise get. There’d be relegation and promotion to ensure even leagues to keep everything competitive. It would also provide another pathway for smaller countries to qualify for the World Cup and the Euros. In theory that’s good, but is that what’s best for those tournaments?¹

The practicality of it though wasn’t so great. It didn’t take long for UEFA to realize they set the league up wrong and losing their top teams to relegation was in fact a bad idea for future versions of the tournament. They scrapped the promotion and relegation bit and restarted the league two years later.

Eventually the allure wore off. Teams started binning off the competition because who cares if you get relegated? Now three years down the line playing in the B-league and rightfully not giving a fuck, while teams like Israel or Bosnia & Herzogovina are getting pounded in the A-league.

It’s no different than the drab qualifiers. We don’t need this. Considering the tournament was created just to fill vacant match days, getting rid of the matchdays shouldn’t be a problem.

I highly doubt any you disagree with me on this for the simple reason that the majority of the subscribers to this newsletter reside in the UK. Considering that about 95 percent² of my posts have to do with Manchester United, I can infer that my readers probably have a Premier League if not Euro centric view of the sport. Even for readers in the United States, the same logic applies as CONCACAF also has a Nations League for vacant match days. The qualifying schedules could easily be adjusted.

The problem is it’s a bit more complicated over the rest of the world. While European World Cup qualifying only takes 10 games, qualifying from the Asian Confederation began a year ago and will play two matches in every window until 2025. CAF began their World Cup qualifying in November 2023, had more fixtures in June, and are now doing African Cup of Nations Qualifying before resuming in March and going until November. CONMEBOL has the most grueling qualifying schedule with each team playing 18 matches across three years. They began in September of 2023 to qualify for the 2026 World Cup.

This matters because as the Premier League - and the big five European leagues in general - become more and more global, they have more and more stars from other confederations. The schedules of other confederations need to be taken into account if the stars from your league represent countries from those confederations.

I’m not an expert in qualifying tournaments for most regions but it still seems like you can eliminate one fixture a year and be ok? Surely most confederations can simply start qualifying one window earlier?

That only brings us to the next problem. The federations don’t exactly want that! Earlier this week UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin weighed in on the issue.

Ceferin is right. The smaller countries want these games. They need competitive fixtures in order to play games and get their hands on TV money. A big reason the CONCACAF Nations League was set up is because so many island nations lose in the early rounds of qualifying and then weren’t playing a competitive match for another four years³.

Teams aren’t going to just let matches go. They’re not going to want to re-jigger qualifying structures that sees top teams enter into qualifying at later rounds based on previous finishes or something like that if it means less games overall. The overwhelming majority of countries want to play more, not less.

There are two big problems here. The first is that FIFA tries govern with a one size fits all system when that one size does not actually fit everyone. Every region is unique and has it’s own needs. Having one standard global system is preposterous.

The second is the same problem plaguing all of football. Everyone wants to get their slice of the pie. UEFA wants their club tournament and their international tournament. The Premier League wants their competition. The Football League wants their cup. The FA wants their international fixtures and their Cup competition. FIFA wanting a slice of the club action is what’s lead to the Club World Cup.

How do you come up with a solution that makes everyone happy and keeps the product strong? Here’s my suggestion.

Leave the power in the hands of the regions⁴. You get nine dates where each region can designate as international fixture dates and clubs have to release their players. This doesn’t include tournaments which would continue to operate the way they currently do.

Now here’s the kicker, each region gets to decide when those dates are, and only clubs within that region have to release their players. If UEFA decides we’re not taking a break in September then Liverpool would not be obligated to release Mohammed Salah if CAF is playing matches in September. You want to drag your qualifying out over three years? That’s fine, but some of your top players may not be available for all the games.

It’s possible that some Premier League clubs would come to an agreement with national teams allowing their players to miss a match or two in September, but the league as a whole would not need to take off because other parts of the world have more vicious qualifying structures. It’s not like the Premier League halts play in the winter because of the Asian Cup or the African Cup of Nations.

You’d end up having pretty good cooperation between the regions as federations would not want their top players to be missing out on important qualifying matches. You’re also free to add dates but clubs would not be obligated to release their players, which would allow smaller countries to play more matches.

Of course, this may not change anything. UEFA may decide that they love the September break and they’re not scrapping it, or that the November one should be scrapped instead.

I’m just trying to find solutions because something needs to be done. We’re milking the cow dry and eventually it will dry up. We all know this.

At the end of the day it all comes back to the same problem. The people in power now don’t care about what the landscape will look like in 20 years, they’re just trying to get their slice of the pie while they have the opportunity to.

1. I don’t think there’s a right answer for this question. A small country qualifying for a big tournament and getting pounded by the big boys can still bring them exposure they’ve never gotten before which can be good for the growth of the game in their country.

2. Guesstimating here

3. CONCACAF is also the most corrupt of the confederations so we should also take that into account. Any chance to weasel into more money they’re taking

4. Does this make me a football republican?